The
History of Protestantism |
Chapter 1 | RISE AND SPREAD OF PROTESTANTISM IN
POLAND. The "Catholic Restoration " First Introduction of Christianity into Poland Influence of Wicliffe and Huss Luther The Light Shines on Dantzic The Ex-Monk Knade Rashness of the Dantzic Reformers The Movement thrown back Entrance of Protestantism into Thorn and other Towns Cracow Secret Society, and Queen Bona Sforza Efforts of Romish Synods to Arrest the Truth Entrance of Bohemian Protestants into Poland Their great Missionary Success Students leave Cracow: go to Protestant Universities Attempt at Coercive Measures They Fail Cardinal Hosius A Martyr The Priests in Conflict with the Nobles National Diet of 1552 Auguries Abolition of the Temporal Jurisdiction of the Bishops. |
Chapter 2 | JOHN ALASCO, AND REFORMATION OF EAST
FRIESLAND. No One Leader Many Secondary Ones King Sigismund Augustus His Character Favourably Disposed to Protestantism His Vacillations Project of National Reforming Synod Opposed by the Roman Clergy John Alasco Education Goes to Louvain Visits Zwingle His Stay with Erasmus Recalled to Poland Purges himself from Suspicion of Heresy Proffered Dignities He Severs himself from the Roman Church Leaves Poland Goes to East Friesland Begins its Reformation Difficulties Triumph of Alasco Goes to England Friendship with Cranmer Becomes Superintendent of the Foreign Church in London Retires to Denmark on Death of Edward VI. Persecutions and Wanderings Returns to Poland His Work there Prince Radziwill His Attempts to Reform Poland His Dying Charge to his Son His Prophetic Words to Sigismund Augustus. |
Chapter 3 | ACME OF PROTESTANTISM IN
POLAND. Arts of the Pope's Legate-Popish Synod Judicial Murder A Miracle The King asks the Pope to Reform the Church Diet of 1563 National Synod craved Defeated by the Papal Legate His Representations to the King The King Gained over Project of a Religious Union Conference of the Protestants Union of Sandomir Its Basis The Eucharistic Doctrine of the Polish Protestant Church Acme of Protestantism in Poland. |
Chapter 4 | ORGANISATION OF THE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF
POLAND. Several Church Organisations in Poland Causes Church Government in Poland a Modified Episcopacy The Superintendent His Powers The Senior, etc. The Civil Senior The Synod the Supreme Authority Local and Provincial Synods General Convocation-Two Defects in this Organisation Death of Sigismund Augustus Who shall Succeed him? Coligny proposes the Election of a French Prince Montluc sent as Ambassador to Poland Duke of Anjou Elected Pledges Attempted Treacheries Coronation Henry Attempts to Evade the Oath Firmness of the Polish Protestants The King's Unpopularity and Flight. |
Chapter 5 | TURNING OF THE TIDE OF PROTESTANTISM IN
POLAND. Stephen Bathory Elected to the Throne His Midnight Interview Abandons Protestantism, and becomes a Romanist Takes the Jesuits under his Patronage Builds and Endows Colleges for them Roman Synod of Piotrkow Subtle Policy of the Bishops for Recovering their Temporal Jurisdiction Temporal Ends gained by Spiritual Sanctions Spiritual Terrors versus Temporal Punishments Begun Decadence of Poland Last Successes of its Arms Death of King Stephen Sigismund III. Succeeds " The King of the Jesuits." |
Chapter 6 | THE JESUITS ENTER POLAND DESTRUCTION OF
ITS PROTESTANTISM. Cardinal Hosius His Acquirements Prodigious Activity Brings the Jesuits into Poland They rise to vast Influence Their Tactics Mingle in all Circles Labour to Undermine the Influence of Protestant Ministers Extraordinary Methods of doing this Mob Violence Churches, etc., Burned Graveyards Violated The Jesuits in the Saloons of the Great Their Schools and Method of Teaching They Dwarf the National Mind They Extinguish Literature Testimony of a Popish Writer Reign of Vladislav John Casimir, a Jesuit, ascends the Throne Political Calamities-Revolt of the Cossacks Invasion of the Russians and Swedes Continued Decline of Protestantism and Oppression of Protestants Exhaustion and Ruin of Poland Causes which contributed along with the Jesuits to the Overthrow of Protestantism in Poland. |
Chapter 7 | BOHEMIA ENTRANCE OF
REFORMATION. Darkness Concealing Bohemian Martyrs John Huss First Preachers of the Reformed Doctrine in Bohemia False Brethren Zahera Passek They Excite to Persecutions Martyrs-Nicolas Wrzetenarz-The Hostess Clara Martha von Porzicz The Potter and Girdler Fate of the Persecutors Ferdinand I. Invades Bohemia Persecutions and Emigrations Flight of the Pastors John Augusta, etc. A Heroic Sufferer The Jesuits brought into Bohemia Maximilian II. Persecution Stopped Bohemian Confession Rudolph The Majestats-Brief Full Liberty given to the Protestants. |
Chapter 8 | OVERTHROW OF PROTESTANTISM IN
BOHEMIA. Protestantism Flourishes Constitution of Bohemian. Church Its Government Concord between Romanists and Protestants Temple of Janus Shut Joy of Bohemia Matthias Emperor Election of Ferdinand II. as King of Bohemia Reaction Intrigues and Insults Council-chamber Three Councillors Thrown out at the Window Ferdinand II. elected Emperor War Battle of the White Hill Defeat of the Protestants Atrocities Amnesty Apprehension of Nobles and Senators Their Frightful Sentences -Their Behaviour on the Scaffold Their Deaths. |
Chapter 9 | AN ARMY OF MARTYRS. Count Schlik His Cruel Sentence The Baron of Budowa His Last Hours Argues with the Jesuits His Execution Christopher Harant His Travels His Death Baron Kaplirz His Dream Attires himself for the Scaffold Procopius Dworschezky His Martyrdom Otto Losz His Sleep and Execution Dionysius Czernin His Behaviour on the Scaffold Kochan Steffek Jessenius His Learning His Interview with the Jesuits Cruel Death Khobr Schulz Kutnauer His great Courage His Death Talents and Rank of these Martyrs Their Execution the Obsequies of their Country. |
Chapter 10 | SUPPRESSION OF PROTESTANTISH IN
BOHEHIA. Policy of Ferdinand II Murder of Ministers by the Troops New Plan of Persecution Kindness and its Effects Expulsion of Anabaptists from Moravia The Pastors Banished Sorrowful Partings Exile of Pastors of Kuttenberg The Lutherans "Graciously Dismissed" The Churches Razed The New Clergy Purification of the Churches The Schoolmasters Banished Bibles and Religious Books Burned Spanish Jesuits and Lichtenstein's Dragoons Emigration of the Nobles Reign of Terror in the Towns Oppressive Edicts Ransom-Money Unprotestantizing of Villages and Rural Parts Protestantism Trampled out Bohemia a Desert Testimony of a Popish Writer. |
PROTESTANTISM IN POLAND AND
BOHEMIA.
CHAPTER 1
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RISE AND SPREAD OF
PROTESTANTISM IN POLAND.
The "Catholic Restoration " First
Introduction of Christianity into Poland Influence of Wicliffe and Huss
Luther The Light Shines on Dantzic The Ex-Monk Knade Rashness of the
Dantzic Reformers The Movement thrown back Entrance of Protestantism into
Thorn and other Towns Cracow Secret Society, and Queen Bona Sforza Efforts
of Romish Synods to Arrest the Truth Entrance of Bohemian Protestants into
Poland Their great Missionary Success Students leave Cracow: go to
Protestant Universities Attempt at Coercive Measures They Fail Cardinal
Hosius A Martyr The Priests in Conflict with the Nobles National Diet of
1552 Auguries Abolition of the Temporal Jurisdiction of the
Bishops.
WE are now approaching the era of that great
"Catholic Restoration" which, cunningly devised and most perseveringly carried
on by. the Jesuits, who had: now perfected the organisation and discipline of
their corps, and zealously aided by the arms of the Popish Powers, scourged
Germany with a desolating war of thirty years, trampled out many flourishing
Protestant Churches in the east of Europe, and nearly succeeded in
rehabilitating Rome in her ancient dominancy of all Christendom. But before
entering on the history of these events, it is necessary to follow, in a brief
recital, the rise and progress of Protestantism in the countries of Poland,
Bohemia, Hungary, and parts of Austria, seeing that these were the Churches
which fell before the spiritual cohorts of Loyola, and the military hordes of
Austria, and seeing also that these were the lands, in conjunction with Germany,
which because the seat of that great struggle which seemed as though it were
destined to overthrow Protestantism wholly, till all suddenly, Sweden sent forth
a champion who rolled back the tide of Popish success, and restored the balance
between the two Churches, which has remained much as it was then settled, down
to almost the present hour.
We begin with Poland. Its Reformation opened
with brilliant promise, but it had hardly reached what seemed its noon when its
light was overcast, and since that disastrous hour the farther Poland's story is
pursued, it becomes but the sadder and more melancholy; nevertheless, the
history of Protestantism in Poland is fraught with great lessons, specially
applicable to all free countries. Christianity, it is believed, was introduced
into Poland by missionaries from Great Moravia in the ninth century. In the
tenth we find the sovereign of the country receiving baptism, from which we may
infer that the Christian faith was still spreading in Poland,[1] It is owing to the
simplicity and apostolic zeal of Cyrillus [2] and Methodius, two pastors
from Thessalonica, that the nations, the Slavonians among the rest, who
inhabited the wide territories lying between the Tyrol and the Danube on the one
side, and the Baltic and Vistula on the other, were at so early a period visited
with the light of the Gospel.
Their first day was waxing dim,
notwithstanding that they were occasionally visited by the Waldenses, when
Wicliffe arose in England. This splendor which had burst out in the west,
traveled, as we have already narrated, as far as Bohemia, and from Bohemia it
passed on to Poland, where it came in time to arrest the return of the pagan
night. The voice of Huss was now resounding through Bohemia, and its echoes were
heard in Cracow. Poland was then intimately connected with Bohemia; the language
of the two countries was almost the same; numbers of Polish youth resorted to
the University of Prague, and one of the first martyrs of Huss's Reformation was
a Pole. Stanislav Pazek, a shoemaker by trade, suffered death, along with two
Bohemians, for opposing the indulgences which were preached in Prague in 1411.
The citizens interred their bodies with great respect, and Huss preached a
sermon at their funeral.[3] In 1431, a conference took
place in Cracow, between certain Hussite missionaries and the doctors of the
university, in presence of the king and senate. The doctors did battle for the
ancient faith against the "novelties" imported from the land of Huss, which they
described as doctrines for which the missionaries could plead no better
authority than the Bible. The disputation lasted several days, and Bishop
Dlugosh, the historian of the conference, complains that although, "in the
opinion of all present, the heretics were vanquished, they never acknowledged
their defeat."[4]
It is interesting
to find these three countries Poland, Bohemia, and England at that early
period turning their faces toward the day, and hand-in-hand attempting to find a
path out of the darkness. How much less happy, one cannot help reflecting, the
fate of the first two countries than that of the last, yet all three were then
directing their steps into the same road. Many of the first families in Poland
embraced openly the Bohemian doctrines; and it is an interesting fact that one
of the professors in the university, Andreas Galka, expounded the works of
Wicliffe at Cracow, and wrote a poem in honor of the English Reformer. It is the
earliest production of the Polish muse in existence, a poem in praise of the
Virgin excepted. The author, addressing "Poles, Germans, and all nations," says,
"Wicliffe speaks the truth! Heathendom and Christendom have never had a greater
man than he, and never will." Voice after voice is heard in Poland, attesting a
growing opposition to Rome, till at last in 1515, two years before Luther had
spoken, we find the seminal principle of Protestantism proclaimed by Bernard of
Lublin, in a work which he published at Cracow, and in which he says that "we
must believe the Scriptures alone, and reject human ordinances."[5] Thus was the way
prepared.
Two years after came Luther. The lightnings of his Theses,
which flashed through the skies of all countries, lighted up also those of
Polish Prussia. Of that flourishing province Dantzic was the capital, and the
chief emporium of Poland with Western Europe. In that city a monk, called James
Knade, threw off his habit (1518), took a wife, and began to preach publicly
against Rome. Knade had to retire to Thorn, where he continued to diffuse his
doctrines under the protection of a powerful nobleman; but the seed he had sown
in Dantzic did not perish; there soon arose a little band of preachers, composed
of Polish youths who had sat at Luther's feet in Wittemberg, and of priests who
had found access to the Reformer's writings, who now proclaimed the truth, and
made so numerous converts that in 1524: five churches in Dantzic were given up
to their use.
Success made the Reformers rash. The town council, to whom
the king, Sigismund, had hinted his dislike of these innovations, lagged behind
in the movement, and the citizens resolved to replace that body with men more
zealous. They surrounded the council, to the number of 400, and with arms in
their hands, and cannon pointed on the council-hall, they demanded the
resignation of the members. No sooner had the council dissolved itself than the
citizens elected another from among themselves. The new council proceeded to
complete the Reformation at a stroke. They suppressed the Roman Catholic
worship, they closed the monastic establishments, they ordered that the convents
and other ecclesiastical edifices should be converted into schools and
hospitals, and declared the goods of the "Church" to be public property, but
left them untouched.[6]
This violence only
threw back the movement; the majority of the inhabitants were still of the old
faith, and had a right to exercise its worship till, enlightened in a better
way, they should be pleased voluntarily to abandon it.
The deposed
councillors, seating themselves in carriages hung in black, and encircling their
heads with crape, set out to appear before the king. They implored him to
interpose his authority to save his city of Dantzic, which was on the point of
being drowned in heresy, and re-establish the old order of things. The king, in
the main upright and tolerant, at first temporised. The members of council, by
whom the late changes had been made, were summoned before the king's tribunal to
justify their doings; but, not obeying the summons, they were outlawed. In
April, 1526, the king in person visited Dantzic; the citizens, as a precaution
against change, received the monarch in arms; but the royal troops, and the
armed retainers of the Popish lords who accompanied the king, so greatly
outnumbered the Reformers that they were overawed, and submitted to the court. A
royal decree restored the Roman Catholic worship; fifteen of the leading
Reformers were beheaded, and the rest banished; the citizens were ordered to
return within the Roman pale or quit Dantzic; the priests and monks who had
abandoned the Roman Church were exiled, and the churches appropriated to
Protestant worship were given back to mass. This was a sharp castigation for
leaving the peaceful path. Nevertheless, the movement in Dantzic was only
arrested, not destroyed. Some years later, there came an epidemic to the city,
and amid the sick and the dying there stood up a pious Dominican, called Klein,
to preach the Gospel. The citizens, awakened a second time to eternal things,
listened to him. Dr. Eck, the famous opponent of Luther, importuned King
Sigismund to stop the preacher, and held up to him, as an example worthy of
imitation, Henry VIII. of England, who had just published a book against the
Reformer. "Let King Henry write against Martin," replied Sigismund, "but, with
regard to myself, I shall be king equally of the sheep and of the goats."[7] Under the following reign
Protestantism triumphed in Dantzie.
About the; same time the Protestant
doctrines began to take root in other towns of Polish Prussia. In Thorn,
situated on the Vistula, these doctrines appeared in 1520, There came that year
toThorn, Zacharias Fereira, a legate of the Pope. He took a truly Roman way of
warning the inhabitants against the heresy which had invaded, their town.
Kindling a great fire before the Church of St. John, he solemnly committed the
effigies and writings of Luther to the flames. The faggots had hardly begun to
blaze when a shower of stones from the townsmen saluted the legate and his
train, and they were forced to flee, before they had had time to consummate
their auto- da-fe. At Braunsberg, the seat of the Bishop of Ermeland, the
Lutheran worship was publicly introduced in 1520, without the bishop's taking
any steps to prevent it. When reproached by his chapter for his supineness, he
told his canons that the Reformer founded all he said on Scripture, and any one
among them who deemed himself competent to refute him was at liberty to do so.
At Elbing and many other towns the light was spreading.
A secret society,
composed of the first scholars of the day, lay and cleric, was formed at Cracow,
the university seat, not so much to propagate the Protestant doctrines as to
investigate the grounds of their truth. The queen of Sigismund I., Bona Sforza,
was an active member of this society. She had for her confessor a learned
Italian, Father Lismanini. The Father received most of the Protestant
publications that appeared in the various countries of Europe, and laid them on
the table of the society, with the view of their being read and canvassed by the
members. The society at a future period acquired a greater but not a better
renown. One day a priest named Pastoris, a native of Belgium, rose in it and
avowed his disbelief of the Trinity, as a doctrine inconsistent with the unity
of the Godhead. The members, who saw that this was to overthrow revealed
religion, were mute with astonishment; and some, believing that what they had
taken for the path of reform was the path of destruction, drew back, and took
final refuge in Romanism. Others declared themselves disciples of the priest,
and thus were laid in Poland the foundations of Socinianism.[8]
The rapid diffusion
of the light is best attested by the vigorous efforts of the Romish clergy to
suppress it. Numerous books appeared at this time in Poland against Luther and
his doctrines. The Synod of Lenczyca, in 1527, recommended the re-establishment
of the "Holy Inquisition." Other Synods drafted schemes of ecclesiastical
reform, which, in Poland as in all the other countries where such projects were
broached, were never realized save on paper. Others recommended the appointment
of popular preachers to instruct the ignorant, and guide their feet past the
snares which were being laid for them in the writings of the heretics On the
principle that it would be less troublesome to prevent the planting of these
snares, than after they were set to guide the unwary past them, they prohibited
the introduction of such works into the country. The Synod of Lenczyca, in 1532,
went a step farther, and in its zeal to preserve the "sincere faith" in Poland,
recommended the banishment of "all heretics beyond the bounds of Sarmatia."[9] The Synod of Piotrkow, in
1542, published a decree prohibiting all students from resorting to universities
conducted by heretical professors, and threatening with exclusion from all
offices and dignities all who, after the passing of the edict, should repair to
such universities, or who, being already at such, did not instantly
return.
This edict had no force in law, for besides not being recognised
by the Diet, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was carefully limited by the
constitutional liberties of Poland, and the nobles still continued to send their
sons to interdicted universities, and in particular to Wittemberg. Meanwhile the
national legislation of Poland began to flow in just the opposite channel. In
1539 a royal ordinance established the liberty of the press; and in 1543 the
Diet of Cracow granted the freedom of studying at foreign universities to all
Polish subjects.
At this period an event fell out which gave an
additional impulse to the diffusion of Protestantism in Poland. In 1548, a
severe persecution, which will come under our notice at a subsequent stage of
our history, arose against the Bohemian brethren, the descendants of that
valiant host who had cormbated for the faith under Ziska. In the year
above-named Ferdinand of Bohemia published an edict shutting up their churches,
imprisoning their ministers, and enjoining the brethren, under severe penalties,
to leave the country within forty-two days. A thousand exiles, marshalling
themselves in three bands, left their native villages, and began their march
westward to Prussia, where Albert of Brandenburg, a zealous Reformer, had
promised them asylum. The pilgrims, who were under the conduct of Sionins, the
chief of their community- "the leader of the people of God," as a Polish
historian styles him had to pass through Silesia and Poland on their way to
Prussia. Arriving in Posen in June, 1548, they were welcomed by Andreas Gorka,
first magistrate of Grand Poland, a man of vast possessions, and Protestant
opinions, and were offered a settlement in his States. Here, meanwhile, their
journey terminated. The pious wanderers erected churches and celebrated their
worship. Their hymns chanted in the Bohemian language, and their sermons
preached in the same tongue, drew many of the Polish inhabitants, whose speech
was Slavonic, to listen, and ultimately to embrace their opinions. A missionary
army, it looked to them as if Providence had guided their steps to this spot for
the conversion of all the provinces of Grand Poland. The Bishop of Posen saw the
danger that menaced his diocese, and rested not till he had obtained an order
from Sigismund Augustus, who had just succeeded his father (1548), enjoining the
Bohemian emigrants to quit the territory. The order might possibly have been
recalled, but the brethren, not wishing to be the cause of trouble to the
grandee who had so nobly entertained them, resumed their journey, and arrived in
due time in Prussia, where Duke Albert, agreeably to his promise, accorded them
the rights of naturalisation, and full religious liberty. But the seed they had
sown in Posen remained behind them. In the following year (1549) many of them
returned to Poland, and resumed their propagation of the Reformed doctrines.
They prosecuted their work without molestation, and with great success. Many of
the principal families embraced their opinions; and the ultimate result of their
labors was the formation of about eighty congregations in the provinces of Grand
Poland, besides many in other parts of the kingdom.
A quarrel broke out
between the students and the university authorities at Cracow, which, although
originating in a street-brawl, had important bearings on the Protestant
movement. The breach it was found impossible to heal, and the students resolved
to leave Cracow in a body. "The schools became silent," says a contemporary
writer, "the halls of the university were deserted, and the churches were
mute."[10] Nothing but farewells,
lamentations, and groans resounded through Cracow. The pilgrims assembled ill a
suburban church, to hear a farewell mass, and then set forth, singing a sacred
hymn, some taking the road to the College of Goldberg, in Silesia, and others
going on to the newly-erected University of Konigsberg, in Prussia. The
first-named school was under the direction of Frankendorf, one of the most
eminent of Melancthon's pupils; Konigsberg, a creation of Albert, Duke of
Prussia, was already fulfilling its founder's intention, which was the diffusion
of scriptural knowledge. In both seminaries the predominating influences were
Protestant. The consequence was that almost all these students returned to their
homes imbued with the Reformed doctrine, and powerfully contributed to spread it
in Poland.
So stood the movement when Sigismund Augustus ascended the
throne in 1548. Protestant truth was widely spread throughout the kingdom. In
the towns of Polish Prussia, where many Germans resided, the Reformation was
received in its Lutheran expression; in the rest of Poland it was embraced in
its Calvinistic form. Many powerful nobles had abandoned Romanism; numbers of
priests taught the Protestant faith; but, as yet, there existed no organisation
no Church. This came at a later period. The priesthood had as yet erected no
stake. They thought to stem the torrent by violent denunciations, thundered from
the pulpit, or sent abroad over the kingdom through the press. They raised their
voices to the loftiest pitch, but the torrent continued to flow broader and
deeper every day.
They now began to make trial of coercive measures.
Nicholaus Olesnicki, Lord of Pinczov, ejecting the images from a church on his
estates, established Protestant worship in it according to the forms of Geneva.
This was the first open attack on the ancient order of things, and Olesnicki was
summoned before the ecclesiastical tribunal of Cracow. He obeyed the summons,
but the crowd of friends and retainers who accompanied him was such that the
court was terrified, and dared not open its sittings. The clergy had taken a
first step, but had lost ground thereby.
The next move was to convoke a
Synod (1552) at Piotrkow. At that Convocation, the afterwards celebrated
Cardinal Hosius produced a summary of the Roman faith, which he proposed all
priests and all of senatorial and equestrian degree should be made to subscribe.
Besides the fundamental doctrines of Romanism, this creed of Hosius made the
subscriber express his belief in purgatory, in the worship of saints and images,
in the efficacy of holy water, of fasts, and similar rites.[11] The suggestion of Hosius
was adopted; all priests were ordered to subscribe this test, and the king was
petitioned to exact subscription to it from all the officers of his Government,
and all the nobles of his realm. The Synod further resolved to set on foot a
Vigorous war against heresy, to support which a tax was to be levied on the
clergy. It was sought to purchase the assistance of the king by offering him the
confiscated property of all condemned heretics.[12] It seemed as if Poland was
about to be lighted up with martyr-piles.
A beginning was made with
Nicholaus, Rector of Kurow. This good man began in 1550 to preach the doctrine
of salvation by grace, and to give the Communion in both kinds to his
parlshioners. For these offenses he was cited before the ecclesiastical
tribunal, where he courageously defended himself. He was afterwards thrown into
a dungeon, and deprived of life, but whether by starvation, by poison, or by
methods more violent still, cannot now be known. One victim had been offered to
the insulted majesty of Rome in Poland. Contemporary chroniclers speak of others
who were immolated to the intolerant genius of the Papacy, but their execution
took place, not in open day, but in the secresy of the cell, or in the darkness
of the prison.
The next move of the priests landed them in open conflict
with the popular sentiment and the chartered rights of the nation. No country in
Europe enjoyed at that hour a greater degree of liberty than did Poland. The
towns, many of which were flourishing, elected their own magistrates, and thus
each city, as regarded its internal affairs, was a little republic. The nobles,
who formed a tenth of the population, were a peculiar and privileged class. Some
of them were owners of vast domains, inhabited castles, and lived in great
magnificence. Others of them tilled their own lands; but all of them, grandee
and husbandman alike, were equal before the law, and neither their persons nor
property could be disposed of, save by the Diet. The king himself was subject to
the law. We find the eloquent but versatile Orichovius, who now thundered
against the Pope, and now threw himself prostrate before him, saying in one of
his philippics, "Your Romans bow their knees before the crowd of your menials;
they bear on their necks the degrading yoke of the Roman scribes; but such is
not the case with us, where the law rules even the throne." The free
constitution of the country was a shield to its Protestantism, as the clergy had
now occasion to experience. Stanislav Stadnicki, a nobleman of large estates and
great influence, having embraced the Reformed opinions, established the
Protestant worship according to the forms of Geneva on his domains. He was
summoned to answer for his conduct before the tribunal of the bishop. Stadnicki
replied that he was quite ready to justify both his opinions and his acts. The
court, however, had no wish to hear what he had to say in behalf of his faith,
and condemned him, by default, to civil death and loss of property. Had the
clergy wished to raise a flame all over the kingdom, they could have done
nothing more fitted to gain their end.
Stadnicki assembled his
fellow-nobles and told them what the priests had done. The Polish grandees had
ever been jealous of the throne, but here was an ecclesiastical body, acting
under an irresponsible foreign chief, assuming a power which the king had never
ventured to exercise, disposing of the lives and properties of the nobles
without reference to any will or ally tribunal save their own. The idea was not
to be endured. There rung a loud outcry against ecclesiastical tyranny all
throughout Poland; and the indignation was brought to a height by numerous
apprehensions, at that same time, at the instance of the bishops, of influential
persons among others, priests of blameless life, who had offended against the
law of clerical celibacy, and whom the Roman clergy sought to put to death, but
could not, simply from the circumstance that they could find no magistrate
willing to execute their sentences.
At this juncture it happened that the
National Diet (1552) assembled. Unmistakable signs were apparent at its opening
of the strong anti-Papal feeling that animated many of its members. As usual,
its sessions were inaugurated by the solemn performance of high mass. The king
in his robes was present, and with him were the ministers of his council, the
officers of his household, and the generals of his army, bearing the symbols of
their office, and wearing the stars and insignia of their rank; and there, too,
were the senators of the Upper Chamber, and the members of the Lower House. All
that could be done by chants and incense, by splendid vestments and priestly
Fires, to make the service impressive, and revive the decaying veneration of the
worshippers for the Roman Church, was done. The great words which effect the
prodigy of transubstantiation had been spoken; the trumpet blared, and the clang
of grounded arms rung through the building. The Host was being elevated, and the
king and his court fell on their knees; but many of the deputies, instead of
prostrating themselves, stood erect and turned away their faces. Raphael
Leszczynski, a nobleman of high character and great possessions, expressed his
dissent from Rome's great mystery in manner even more marked: he wore his hat
all through the performance. The priests saw, but dared not reprove, this
contempt of their rites.[13]
The auguries with
which the Diet had opened did not fail of finding ample fulfilment in its
subsequent proceedings. The assembly chose as its president Leszczynski the
nobleman who had remained uncovered during mass, and who had previously resigned
his senatorial dignity in order to become a member of the Lower House.[14] The Diet immediately took
into consideration the jurisdiction wielded by the bishops. The question put in
debate was this Is such jurisdiction, carrying civil effects, compatible with
the rights of the crown and the freedom of the nation? The Diet decided that it
was consistent with neither the prerogatives of the sovereign nor the liberties
of the people, and resolved to abolish it, so far as it had force in law. King
Sigismund Augustus thought it very possible that if he were himself to mediate
in the matter he would, at least, succeed in softening the fall of the bishops,
if only he could persuade them to make certain concessions. But he was mistaken:
the ecclesiastical dignitaries were perverse, and resolutely refused to yield
one iota of their powers. Thereupon the Diet issued its decree, which the king
ratified, that the clergy should retain the power of judging of heresy, but have
no power of inflicting civil or criminal punishment on the condemned. Their
spiritual sentences were henceforward to carry no temporal effects whatever. The
Diet of 1552 may be regarded as the epoch of the downfall of Roman Catholic
predominancy in Poland, and of the establishment in that country of the liberty
of all religious confessions. [15]
The anger of the
bishops was inflamed to the utmost. They entered their solemn protest against
the enactment of the Diet. The mitre was shorn of half its splendor, and the
crozier of more than half its power, by being disjoined from the sword. They
left the Senate-hall in a body, and threatened to resign their senatorial
dignities. The Diet heard their threats unmoved, and as it made not the
slightest effort either to prevent their departure or to recall them after they
were gone, but, on the contrary, went on with its business as if nothing unusual
had occurred, the bishops returned and took their seats of their own
accord.
CHAPTER 2
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JOHN ALASCO, AND
REFORMATION OF EAST FRIESLAND.
No One Leader Many Secondary Ones
King Sigismund Augustus His Character Favourably Disposed to Protestantism
His Vacillations Project of National Reforming Synod Opposed by the Roman
Clergy John Alasco Education Goes to Louvain Visits Zwingle His Stay
with Erasmus Recalled to Poland Purges himself from Suspicion of Heresy
Proffered Dignities He Severs himself from the Roman Church Leaves Poland
Goes to East Friesland Begins its Reformation Difficulties Triumph of
Alasco Goes to England Friendship with Cranmer Becomes Superintendent of
the Foreign Church in London Retires to Denmark on Death of Edward VI.
Persecutions and Wanderings Returns to Poland His Work there Prince
Radziwill His Attempts to Reform Poland His Dying Charge to his Son His
Prophetic Words to Sigismund Augustus.
We see the movement marching on, but we can see no
one leader going before it. The place filled by Luther in Germany, by Calvin in
Geneva, and by men not dissimilarly endowed in other countries, is vacant in the
Reformation of Poland. Here it is a Waldensian missionary or refugee who is
quietly sowing the good seed which he has drawn from the garner of some
manuscript copy of the New Testament, and there it is a little band of Bohemian
brethren, who have preserved the traditions of John Huss, and are trying to
plant them in this new soil. Here it is a university doctor who is expounding
the writings of Wicliffe to his pupils, and there it is a Polish youth who has
just returned from Wittemberg, and is anxious to communicate to his countrymen
the knowledge which he has there learned, and which has been so sweet and
refreshing to himself. Nevertheless, although amid all these laborers we can
discover no one who first gathers all the forces of the new life into himself,
and again sends them forth over the land, we yet behold the darkness vanishing
on every side. Poland's Reformation is not a sunrise, but a daybreak: the first
dim streaks are succeeded by others less doubtful; these are followed by
brighter shades still; till at last something like the clearness of day
illuminates its sky. The truth has visited some nobleman, as the light will
strike on some tall mountain at the morning hour, and straightway his retainers
and tenantry begin to worship as their chief worships; or some cathedral abbot
or city priest has embraced the Gospel, and their flocks follow in the steps of
their shepherd, and find in the doctrine of a free salvation a peace of soul
which they never experienced amid the burdensome rites and meritorious services
of the Church of Rome. There are no combats; no stakes; no mighty hindrances to
be vanquished; Poland seems destined to enter without struggle or bloodshed into
possession of that precious inheritance which other nations are content to buy
with a great price.
But although there is no one who, in intellectual and
spiritual stature, towers so far above the other workers in Poland as to be
styled its Reformer there are three names connected with the history of
Protestantism in that country so outstanding as not to be passed without
mention. The first is that of King Sigismund Augustus. Tolerant, accomplished,
and pure in life, this monarch had read the Institutes, and was a correspondent
of Calvin, who sought to inflame him with the ardor of making his name and reign
glorious by laboring to effect the Reformation of his dominions. Sigismund
Augustus was favourably disposed toward the doctrines of Protestantism, and he
had nothing of that abhorrence of heresy and terror of revolution which made the
kings of France drive the Gospel from their realm with fire and sword; but he
vacillated, and could never make up his mind between Rome and the Reformation.
The Polish king would fain have seen an adjustment of the differences that
divided his subjects into two great parties, and the dissensions quieted that
agitated his kingdom, but he feared to take the only effectual steps that could
lead to that end. He was surrounded constantly with Protestants, who cherished
the hope that he would yet abandon Rome, and declare himself openly in favour of
Protestantism, but he always drew back when the moment came for deciding. We
have seen him, in conjunction with the Diet of 1552, pluck the sword of
persecution from the hands of the bishops; and he was willing to go still
further, and make trial of any means that promised to amend the administration
and reform the doctrines of the Roman Church. He was exceedingly favorable to a
project much talked of in his reign namely, that of convoking a National Synod
for reforming the Church on the basis of Holy Scripture.
The necessity of
such an assembly had been mooted in the Diet of 1552; it was revived in the Diet
of 1555, and more earnestly pressed on the king, and thus contemporaneously with
the abdication of the imperial sovereignty by Charles V., and the yet unfinished
sittings of the great Council of Trent, the probability was that Christendom
would behold a truly (Ecumenical Council assemble in Poland, and put the
topstone upon the Reformation of its Church and kingdom. The projected Polish
assembly, over which it was proposed that King Sigismund Augustus should
preside, was to be composed of delegates from all the religious bodies in the
kingdom Lutherans, Calvinists, and Bohemians who were to meet and deliberate
on a perfect equality with the Roman clergy.
Nor was the constituency of
this Synod to be confined to Poland; other Churches and lands were to be
represented in it. All the living Reformers of note were to be invited to it;
and, among others, it was to include the great names of Calvin and Beza, of
Melancthon and Vergerius. But this Synod was never to meet. The clergy of Rome,
knowing that tottering fabrics can stand only in a calm air, and that their
Church was in a too shattered condition to survive the shock of free discussion
conducted by such powerful antagonists, threw every obstacle in the way of the
Synod's meeting. Nor was the king very zealous in the affair. It is: doubtful
whether Sigismund Augustus was ever brought to test the two creeds by the great
question which of the twain was able to sustain the weight of his soul's
salvation; and so, with convictions feeble and ill-defined, his purpose touching
the reform of the Church never ripened into act.
The second name is that
of no vacillating man we have met it before it is that of John Alasco. John
Alasco, born in the last year save one of the fifteenth century [1] was sprung of one of the
most illustrious families in Poland. Destined for the Church, he received the
best education which the schools of his native land could bestow, and he
afterwards visited Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium in order to enlarge and
perfect his studies. At the University of Louvain, renowned for the purity of
its orthodoxy, and whither he resorted, probably at the recommendation of his
uncle, who was Primate of Poland, he contracted a close friendship with Albert
Hardenberg.[2] After a short stay at.
Louvain, finding the air murky with scholasticism, he turned his steps in the
direction of Switzerland, and arriving at Zurich, he made the acquaintance of
Zwingle.
"Search the Scriptures," said the Reformer of Zurich to the
young Polish nobleman. Alasco turned to that great light, and from that moment
he began to be delivered from the darkness which had till then encompassed him.
Quitting Zurich and crossing the Jura, he entered Basle, and presented himself
before Erasmus. This great master of the schools was not slow to discover the
refined grace, the beautiful genius, and the many and great acquirements of the
stranger who had sought his acquaintance. Erasmus was charmed with the young
Pole, and Alasco on his part was equally enamoured of Erasmus. Of all then
living, Erasmus, if not the man of highest genius, was the man of highest
culture, and doubtless the young scholar caught the touch of a yet greater
suavity from this prince of letters, as Erasmus, in the enthusiasm of his
friendship, confesses that he had grown young again in the society of Alasco.
The Pole lived about a year (1525) under the roof,[3] but not at the cost of the
great scholar; for his disposition being as generous as his means were ample, he
took upon himself the expenses of housekeeping; and in other ways he ministered,
with equal liberality and delicacy, to the wants of his illustrious host. He
purchased his library for 300 golden crowns, leaving to Erasmus the use of it
during his life-time.[4] He formed a friendship
with other eminent men then living at Basle; in particular, with Oecolampadius
and Pellicanus, the latter of whom initiated him into the study of the Hebrew
Scriptures.
His uncle, the primate, hearing that his nephew had fallen
into "bad company," recalled him by urgent letters to Poland. It cost Alasco a
pang to tear himself from his friends in Basle. He carried back to his native
land a heart estranged from Rome, but he did not dissever himself from her
communion, nor as yet did he feel the necessity of doing so; he had tested her
doctrines by the intellect only, not by the conscience, He was received at
court, where his youth, the refinement of his manners, and the brilliance of his
talents made him a favourite. The pomps and galeties amid which he now lived
weakened, but did not wholly efface, the impressions made upon him at Zurich and
Basle. Destined for the highest offices in the Church of Poland, his uncle
demanded that he should purge himself by oath from the suspicions of heresy
which had hung about him ever since his return from Switzerland. Alasco
complied. The document signed by him is dated in 1526, and in it Alasco promises
not to embrace doctrines foreign to those of the Apostolic Roman Church, and to
submit in all lawful and honest things to the authority of the bishops and of
the Papal See. "This I swear, so help me, God, and his holy Gospel."[5]
This fall was meant
to be the first step towards the primacy. Ecclesiastical dignities began now to
be showered upon him, but the duties which these imposed, by bringing him into
close contact with clerical men, disclosed to him more and more every day the
corruptions of the Papacy, and the need of a radical reform of the Church. He
resumed his readings in the Bible, and renewed his correspondence with the
Reformers. His spiritual life revived, and he began now to try Rome by the only
infallible touch-stone "Can I, by the performance of the works she prescribes,
obtain peace of conscience, and make myself holy in the sight of God?" Alasco
was constrained to confess that he never should. He must therefore, at whatever
cost, separate himself from her. At this moment two mitres that of Wesprim in
Hungary, and that of Cujavia in Poland were placed at his acceptance.[6] The latter mitre opened
his way to the primacy in Poland. On the one side were two kings proffering him
golden dignities, on the other was the Gospel, with its losses and afflictions.
Which shall he choose? "God, in his goodness," said he, writing to Pellicanus,
"has brought me to myself." He went straight to the king, and frankly and boldly
avowing his convictions, declined the Bishopric of Cujavia.
Poland was no
place for Alasco after such an avowal, lie left his native land in 1536,
uncertain in what country he should spend what might yet remain to him of life,
which was now wholly devoted to the cause of the Reformation. Sigismund, who
knew his worth, would most willingly have retained Alasco the Romanist, but
perhaps he was not sorry to see Alasco the Protestant leave his dominions. The
Protestant princes, to whom his illustrious birth and great parts had made him
known, vied with each other to secure his services. The Countess Regent of East
Friesland, where the Reformation had been commenced in 1528, urged him to come
and complete the work by assuming the superintendence of the churches of that
province. After long deliberation he went, but the task was a difficult one. The
country had become the battle-ground of the sectaries. All things were in
confusion; the churches were full of images, and the worship abounded in
mummeries; the people were rude in manners, and many of the nobles dissolute in
life; one less resolute might have been dismayed, and retired.
Alasco
made a commencement. His quiet, yet persevering, and powerful touch was telling.
Straightway a tempest arose around him. The wrangling sectaries on the one side,
and the monks Oh the other, united in assailing the man in whom both recognised
a common foe. Accusations were carried to the court at Brussels against him, and
soon there came an imperial order to expel "the fire-brand" from Friesland.
"Dost thou hear the gowl of the thunder?"[7] said Alasco, writing to
his friends; he expected that the bolt would follow. Anna, the sovereign
princess of the kingdom, terrified at the threat of the emperor, began to cool
in her zeal toward the superintendent and his work; but in proportion as the
clouds grew black and danger menaced, the courage and resolution of the Reformer
waxed strong. He addressed a letter to the princess (1543), fit which he deemed
it "better to be unpolite than to be unfaithful," warning her that should she
"take her hand from the plough" she would have to "give account to the eternal
Judge." "I am only a foreigner," he added, "burdened with a family,[8] and having no home. I
wish, therefore, to be friends with all, but... as far as to the altar. This
barrier I cannot pass, even if I had to reduce my family to beggary."[9]
This noble appeal
brought the princess once more to the side of Alasco, not again to withdraw her
support from one whom she had found so devoted and so courageous. Prudent, yet
resolute, Alasco went on steadily in his work. Gradually the remnants of
Romanism were weeded out; gradually the images disappeared from the temples; the
order and discipline of the Church were reformed on the Genevan model; the
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was established according to the doctrine of
Calvin;[10] and, as regarded the
monks, they were permitted to occupy their convents in peace, but were forbidden
the public performance of their worship. Not liking this restraint, the Fathers
quietly withdrew from the kingdom. In six years John Alasco had completed the
Reformation of the Church of East Friesland. It was a great service. He had
prepared an asylmn for the Protestants of the Netherlands during the evil days
that were about to come upon them, and he had helped to pave the way for the
appearance of William of Orange.
The Church order established by Alasco
in Friesland was that of Geneva. This awoke against him the hostility of the
Lutherans, and the adherents of that creed continuing to multiply in Friesland,
the troubles of Alasco multiplied along with them. He resigned the general
direction of ecclesiastical affairs, which he had exercised as superintendent,
and limited his sphere of action to the ministry of the single congregation of
Emden, the capital of the country.
But the time was come when John Alasco
was to be removed to another sphere. A pressing letter now reached him from
Archbishop Cranmer, inviting him to take part, along with other distinguished
Continental Reformers, in completing the Reformation of the Church of England.[11] The Polish Reformer
accepted the invitation, and traversing Brabant and Flanders in disguise, he
arrived in London in September, 1548. A six months' residence with Cranmer at
Lambeth satisfied him that the archbishop's views and his own, touching the
Reformation of the Church, entirely coincided; and an intimate friendship sprang
up between the two, which bore good fruits for the cause of Protestantism in
England, where Alaseo's noble character and great learning soon won him high
esteem.
After a short visit to Friesland, in 1549, he returned to
England, and was nominated by Edward VI., in 1550, Superintendent of the German,
French, and Italian congregations erected in London, numbering between 3,000 and
4,000 persons, and which Cranmer hoped would yet prove a seed of Reformation in
the various countries from which persecution had driven them,[12] and would also excite the
Church of England to pursue the path of Protestantism. And so, doubtless, it
would have been, had not the death of Edward VI. and the accession of Mary
suddenly changed the whole aspect of affairs in England.[13] The Friesian Reformer and
his congregation had now to quit our shore. They embarked at Gravesend on the
15th of September, 1553, in the presence of thousands of English Protestants,
who crowded the banks of the Thames, and on bended knees supplicated the
blessing and protection of Heaven on the wanderers.
Setting sail, their
little fleet was scattered by a storm, and the vessel which bore John Alasco
entered the Danish harbor of Elsinore. Christian III. of Denmark, a mild and
pious prince, received Alasco and his fellow-exiles at first with great
kindness; but soon their asylum was invaded by Lutheran intolerance. The
theologians of the court, Westphal and Pomeranus (Bugenhagen), poisoned the
king's mind against the exiles, and they were compelled to re-embark at an
inclement season, and traverse tempestuous seas in quest of some more hospitable
shore. This shameful breach of hospitality was afterwards repeated at Lubeck,
Hamburg, and Rostock; it kindled the indignation of the Churches of Switzerland,
and it drew from Calvin an eloquent letter to Alasco, in which he gave vent not
only to his deep sympathy with him and his companions in suffering, but also to
his astonishment "that the barbarity of a Christian people should exceed even
the sea in savageness.[14]
Driven hither and
thither, not by the hatred of Rome, but by the intolerance of brethren, Gustavus
Vasa, the reforming monarch of Sweden, gave a cordial welcome to the pastor and
his flock, should they choose to settle in his dominions. Alasco, however,
thought better to repair to Friesland, the scene of his former labors; but even
here the Lutheran spirit, which had been growing in his absence, made his stay
unpleasant. He next sought asylum in Frankfort-on-the-Maine, where he
established a Church for the Protestant refugees from Belgium.[15] During his stay at
Frankfort he essayed to heal the breach between the Lutheran and the Calvinistic
branches of the Reformation. The mischiefs of that division he had amply
experienced in his own person; but its noxious influence was felt far beyond the
little community of which he was the center. It was the great scandal of
Protestantism; it disfigured it with dissensions and hatreds, and divided and
weakened it in the presence of a powerful foe. But his efforts to heal this
deplorable and scandalous schism, although seconded by the Senate of Frankfort
and several German princes, were in vain.[16]
He never lost sight
of his native land; in all his wanderings he cherished the hope of returning to
it at a future day, and aiding in the Reformation of its Church; and now (1555)
he dedicated to Sigismund Augustus of Poland a new edition of an account he had
formerly published of the foreign Churches in London of which he had acted as
superintendent. He took occasion at the same time to explain in full his own
sentiments on the subject of Church Reformation. With great calmness and
dignity, but with great strengh of argument, he maintained that the Scriptures
were the one sole basis of Reformation; that neither from tradition, however
venerable, nor from custom, however long established, were the doctrines of the
Church's creed or the order of her government to be deduced; that neither
Councils nor Fathers could infallibly determine anything; that apostolic
practice, as recorded in the inspired canon that is to say, the Word of God
alone possessed authority in this matter, and was a sure guide. He also took the
liberty of urging on the, king the necessity of a Reformation of the Church of
Poland, "of which a prosperous beginning had already been made by the greatest
and best part of the nation;" but the matter, he added, was one to be prosecuted
"with judgment and care, seeing every one who reasoned against Rome was not
orthodox;" and touching the Eucharist that vexed question, and in Poland, as
elsewhere, so fertile in divisions Alasco stated "that doubtless believers
received the flesh and blood of Christ in the Communion, but by the lip of the
soul, for there was neither bodily nor personal presence in the Eucharist."[17]
It is probable that
it was this publication that led to his recall to Poland, in 1556, by the king
and nobles.[18] The Roman bishops heralded
his coming with a shout of terror and wrath. "The 'butcher' [19] of the Church has entered
Poland! " they cried. "Driven out of every land, he returns to that one that
gave him birth, to afflict it with troubles and commotions. He is collecting
troops to wage war against the king, root out the Churches, and spread riot and
bloodshed over the kingdom." This clamor had all the effect on the royal mind
which it deserved to have that is, none at all.[20]
Alasco, soon after
his return, was appointed superintendent of all the Reformed Churches of Little
Poland.[21] His long-cherished object
seemed now within his reach. That was not the tiara of the primacy for, if so,
he needed not have become the exile; his ambition was to make the Church of
Poland one of the brightest lights in the galaxy of the Reformation. He had
arrived at his great task with fully-ripened powers. Of illustrious birth, and
of yet more illustrious learning and piety, he was nevertheless, from
remembrance of his fall, humble as a child. Presiding over the Churches of more
than half the kingdom, Protestantism, under his fostering care, waxed stronger
every day. He held Synods. He actively assisted in the translation of the first
Protestant Bible in Poland, that he might give his countrymen direct access to
the fountain of truth. He laboured unweariedly in the cause of union. He had
especially at heart the healing of the great breach between the Lutheran and the
Reformed the sore through which so much of the vital force of Protestantism
was ebbing away. The final goal which he kept ever in eye, and at which he hoped
one day to arrive, was the erection of a national Church, Reformed in doctrine
on the basis of the Word of God, and constituted in government as similarly to
the Churches over which he had presided in London as the circumstances of Poland
would allow. Besides the opposition of the Roman hierarchy, which was to be
looked for, the Reformer found two main hindrances obstructing his path. The
first was the growth of and-Trinitarian doctrines, first broached, as we have
seen, in the secret society of Cracow, and which continued to spread widely
among the Churches superintended by Alasco, in spite of the polemical war he
constantly maintained against them. The second was the vacillation of King
Sigismund Augustus. Alasco urged the. convocation of a National Synod, in order
to the more speedy and universal Reformation of the Polish Church. But the king
hesitated. Meanwhile Rome, seeing in the measures on foot, and more especially
in the projected Synod, the impending overthrow of her power in Poland,
dispatched Lippomani, one of the ablest of the Vatican diplomatists, with a
promise, sealed with the Fisherman's ring, of a General Council, which should
reform the Church and restore her unity.
What need, then, for a National
Council? The Pope would do, and with more order and quiet, what the Poles wished
to have done. How many score of times had this promise been made, and when had
it proved aught save a delusion and a snare? It served, however, as an excuse to
the king, who refused to convoke the Synod which Alasco so much desired to see
assemble. It was a great crisis. The Reformation had essayed to crown her work
in Poland, but she was hindered, and the fabric remained unfinished: a
melancholy monument of the egregious error of letting slip those golden
opportunities that are given to nations, which "they that are wise" embrace, but
they that are void of wisdom neglect, and 'bewail their folly with floods of
tears and torrents of blood in the centuries that come after.
In January,
1560, John Alasco died, and was buried with great pomp in the Church of
Pintzov.[22] After him there arose in
Poland no Reformer of like adaptability and power, nor did the nation ever again
enjoy so favorable an opportunity of planting its liberties on a stable
foundation by completing its Reformation.[23]
After John Alasco,
but not equal to him, arose Prince Radziwill. His rank, his talents, and his
zealous labors in the cause of Protestantism give him a conspicuous place in the
list of Poland's Reformers. Nicholas Radziwill was sprung of a wealthy family of
Lithuania. He was brother to Barbara, the first queen of Sigismund Augustus,
whose unlimited confidence he enjoyed. Appointed ambassador to the courts of
Charles V. and Ferdinand I., the grace of his manners and the charm of his
discourse so attracted the regards of these monarchs, that he received from the
Emperor Charles the dignity of a Prince of the Empire. At the same time he so
acquitted himself in the many affairs of importance in which he was employed by
his own sovereign, that honors and wealth flowed upon him in his native land. He
was created Chancellor of Lithuania, and Palatine of Vilna. Hitherto politics
alone had engrossed him, but the time was now come when something nobler than
the pomp of courts, and the prizes of earthly kingdoms, was to occupy his
thoughts and call forth his energies. About 1553 he was brought into intercourse
with some Bohemian Protestants at Prague, who instructed him in the doctrines of
the Reformation, which he embraced in the Genevan form. From that time his
influence and wealth both of which were vast were devoted to the cause of
his country's Reformation. He summoned to his help Vergerius [24] from Italy. He supported
many learned Protestants. He defrayed the expense of the printing of the first
Protestant Bible at Brest, in Lithuania, in 1563. He diffused works written in
defense of the Reformed faith. He erected a magnificent church and college at
Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, and in many other ways fostered the Reformed
Church in that powerful province where he exercised almost royal authority.
Numbers of the priests now embraced the Protestant faith. "Almost the whole of
the Roman Catholic nobles," says Krasinski, "including the first families of the
land, and a great number of those who had belonged to the Eastern Church, became
Protestants; so that in the diocese of Samogitia there were only eight Roman
Catholic clergymen remaining. The Reformed worship was established not only in
the estates of the nobles, but also in many towns."[25] On the other side, the
testimony to Radziwill's zeal as a Reformer is equally emphatic. We find the
legate, Lippomani, reproaching him thus: " Public rumor says that the Palatine
of Vilna patronises all heresies, and that all the dangerous innovators are
gathering under his protection; that he erects, wherever his influence reaches,
sacrilegious altars against the altar of God, and that he establishes pulpits of
falsehood against the pulpits of truth." Besides these scandalous deeds, the
legate charges Radziwill with other heinous transgressions against the Papacy,
as the casting down the images of the saints, the forbidding of prayers to the
dead, and the giving of the cup to the laity; by all of which he had greatly
offended against the Holy Father, and put his own salvation in peril set about
writing a work against "the apostates of Germany," which resulted in his own
conversion to Protestantism. He communicated his change of mind to his brother,
Bishop of Pola, who at first opposed, and at last embraced his opinions. The
Bishop of Pola soon after met his fate, though how is shrouded in mystery. The
Bishop of Capo d'Istria was witness to the horrors of the death-bed of Francis
Spira, and was so impressed by them that he resigned his bishopric and left
Italy. He it was that now came to Poland. (See McCrie, Italy.)
Had the
life of Prince Radziwill been prolonged, so great was his influence with the
king, it is just possible that the vacillation of Sigismund Augustus might have
been overcome, and the throne permanently won for the cause of Poland's
Reformation; but that possibility, if it ever existed, was suddenly
extinguished. In 1565, while yet in the prime of life, and in the midst of his
labors for the emancipation of his native land from the Papal yoke, the prince
died. When he felt his last hour approaching he summoned to his bed-side his
eldest son, Nicholas Christopher, and solemnly charged him to abide constant in
the profession of his father's creed, and the service of his father's God; and
to employ the illustrious name, the vast possessions, and the great influence
which had descended to him for the cause of the Reformation.
So ill did
that son fulfill the charge, delivered to him in circumstances so solemn, that
he returned into the bosom of the Roman Church, and to repair to the utmost of
his power the injury his father had done the Papal See, he expended 5,000 ducats
in purchasing copies of his father's Bible, which he burned publicly in the
market-place of Vilna. On the leaves, now sinking in ashes, might be read the
following words, addressed in the dedication to the Polish monarch, and which we
who are able to compare the Poland of the nineteenth century with the Poland of
the sixteenth, can hardly help regarding as prophetic. "But if your Majesty
(which may God avert) continuing to be deluded by this world, unmindful of its
vanity, and fearing still some hypocrisy, will persevere in that error which,
according to the prophecy of Daniel, that impudent priest, the idol of the Roman
temple, has made abundantly to grow in his infected vineyard, like a true and
real Antichrist; if your Majesty will follow to the end that blind chief of a
generation of vipers, and lead us the faithful people of God the same way, it is
to be feared that the Lord may, for such a rejection of his truth, condemn us
all with your Majesty to shame, humiliation, and destruction, and afterwards to
an eternal perdition."[26]
CHAPTER 3
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ACME OF PROTESTANTISM
IN POLAND.
Arts of the Pope's Legate-Popish Synod Judicial Murder
A Miracle The King asks the Pope to Reform the Church Diet of 1563
National Synod craved Defeated by the Papal Legate His Representations to
the King The King Gained over Project of a Religious Union Conference of
the Protestants Union of Sandomir Its Basis The Eucharistic Doctrine of
the Polish Protestant Church Acme of Protestantism in
Poland.
Is following the labors of those eminent men whom God
inspired with the wish to emancipate their native land from the yoke of Rome, we
have gone a little way beyond the point at which we had arrived in the history
of Protestantism in Poland. We go back a stage. We have seen the Diet of 1552
inflict a great blow on the Papal power in Poland, by abolishing the civil
jurisdiction of the bishops. Four years after this (1556) John Alasco returned,
and began his labors in Poland; these he was prosecuting with success, when
Lippomani was sent from Rome to undo his work.
Lippomani's mission bore
fruit. He revived the fainting spirits and rallied the wavering courage of the
Romanists. He sowed with subtle art suspicions and dissensions among the
Protestants; he stoutly promised in the Pope's name all necessary ecclesiastical
reforms; this fortified the king in his vacillation, and furnished those within
the Roman Church who had been demanding a reform, with an excuse for relaxing
their efforts. They would wait "the good time coming." The Pope's manager with
skillful hand lifted the veil, and the Romanists saw in the future a purified,
united, and Catholic Church as clearly as the traveler sees the mirage in the
desert. Vergerius labored to convince them that what they saw was no lake, but a
shimmering vapor, floating above the burning sands, but the phantasm was so like
that the king and the bulk of the nation chose it in preference to the reality
which John Alasco would have given them.
Meanwhile the Diet of 1552 had
left the bishops crippled; their temporal arm had been broken, and their care
now was to restore this most important branch of their jurisdiction. Lippomani
assembled a General Synod of the Popish clergy at Lowicz. This Synod passed a
resolution declaring that heretics, now springing up on every side, ought to be
visited with pains and penalties, and then proceeded to make trial how far the
king and nation would permit them to go in restoring their punitive power. They
summoned to their bar the Canon of Przemysl, Lutomirski by name, on a suspicion
of heresy. The canon appeared, but with him came his friends, all of them
provided with Bibles the best weapons, they thought, for such a battle as that
to which they were advancing; but when the bishops saw how they were armed, they
closed the doors of their judgment-hall and shut them out. The first move of the
prelates had not improved their position.
Their second was attended with
a success that was more disastrous than defeat. They accused a poor girl,
Dorothy Lazecka, of having obtained a consecrated wafer on pretense of
communicating, and of selling it to the Jews. The Jews carried the Host to their
synagogue, where, being pierced with needles, it emitted a quantity of blood.
The miracle, it was said, had come opportunely to show how unnecessary it was to
give the cup to the laity. But further, it was made a criminal charge against
both the girl and the Jews. The Jews pleaded that such an accusation was absurd;
that they did not believe in transubstantiation, and would never think of doing
anything so preposterous as experimenting on a wafer to see whether it contained
blood. But in spite of their defense, they, as well as the unfortunate girl,
were condemned to be burned. This atrocious sentence could not be carried out
without the royal exequatur. The king, when applied to, refused his consent,
declaring that he could not believe such an absurdity, and dispatched a
messenger to Sochaczew, where the parties were confined, with orders for their
release. The Synod, however, was determined to complete its work. The Bishop of
Chelm, who was Vice-Chancellor of Poland, attached the royal seal without the
knowledge of the king, and immediately sent off a messenger to have the sentence
instantly executed. The king, upon being informed of the forgery, sent in haste
to counteract the nefarious act of his minister; but it was too late. Before the
royal messenger arrived the stake had been kindled, and the innocent persons
consumed in the flames.[1]
This deed,
combining so many crimes in one, filled all Poland with horror. The legate,
Lippomani, disliked before, was now detested tenfold. Assailed in pamphlets and
caricatures, he quitted the kingdom, followed by the execration of the nation.
Nor was it Lippomani alone who was struck by the recoil of this, in every way,
unfortunate success; the Polish hierarchy suffered disgrace and damage along
with him, for the atrocity showed the nation what the bishops were prepared to
do, should the sword which the Diet of 1552 had plucked from their hands ever
again be grasped by them.
An attempt at miracle, made about this time,
also helped to discredit the character and weaken the influence of the Roman
clergy in Poland. Christopher Radziwill, cousin to the famous Prince Radziwill,
grieved at his relative's lapse into what he deemed heresy, made a pilgrimage to
Rome, in token of his own devotion to the Papal See, and was rewarded with a box
of precious relics from the Pope. One day after his return home with his
inestimable treasure, the friars of a neighbouring convent waited on him, and
telling him that they had a man possessed by the devil under their care, on whom
the ordinary exorcisms had failed to effect a cure, they besought him, in pity
for the poor demoniac, to lend them his box of relics, whose virtue doubtless
would compel the foul spirit to flee. The bones were given with joy. On a
certain day the box, with its contents, was placed on the high altar; the
demoniac was brought forward, and in presence of a vast multitude the relics
were applied, and with complete success. The evil spirit departed out of the
man, with the usual contortions and grimaces. The spectators shouted, "Miracle!"
and Radziwill, overjoyed, lifted eyes and hands to heaven, in wonder and
gratitude.[2]
In a few days
thereafter his servant, smitten in conscience, came to him and confessed that on
their journey from Rome he had carelessly lost the true relics, and had replaced
them with common bones. This intelligence was somewhat disconcerting to
Radziwill, but greatly more so to the friars, seeing it speedily led to the
disclosure of the imposture. The pretended demoniac confessed that he had simply
been playing a part, and the monks likewise were constrained to acknowledge
their share in the pious fraud. Great scandal arose; the clergy bewailed the day
the Pope's box had crossed the Alps; and Christopher Radziwill, receiving from
the relics a virtue he had not anticipated, was led to the perusal of the
Scriptures, and finally embraced, with his whole family, the Protestant faith.
When his great relative, Prince Radziwill, died in 1565, Christopher came
forward, and to some extent supplied his loss to the Protestant
cause.
The king, still pursuing a middle course, solicited from the Pope,
Paul IV., a Reformation which he might have had to better effect from his
Protestant clergy, if only he would have permitted them to meet and begin the
work. Sigismund Augustus addressed a letter to the Pontiff at the Council of
Trent, demanding the five following things:
The effect of these demands on Paul IV. was to
irritate this very haughty Pontiff; he fell into a fume, and expressed in
animated terms his amazement at the arrogance of his Majesty of Poland; but
gradually cooling down, he declined civilly, as might have been foreseen,
demands which, though they did not amount to a very great deal, were more than
Rome could safely grant.[3]
This rebuff taught
the Protestants, if not the king, that from the Seven Hills no help would come -
that their trust must be in themselves; and they grew bolder every day. In the
Diet of Piotrkow, 1559, an attempt was made to deprive the bishops of their
seats in the Senate, on the ground that their oath of obedience to the Pope was
wholly irreconcilable to and subversive of their allegiance to their sovereign,
and their duty to the nation. The oath was read and commented on, and the
senator who made the motion concluded his speech in support of it by saying that
if the bishops kept their oath of spiritual obedience, they must necessarily
violate their vow of temporal allegiance; and if they were faithful subjects of
the Pope, they must necessarily be traitors to their king.[4] The motion was not
carried, probably because the vague hope of a more sweeping measure of reform
still kept possession of the minds of men.
The next step of the Poles was
in the direction of realising that hope. A Diet met in 1563, and passed a
resolution that a General Synod, in which all the religious bodies in Poland
would be represented, should be assembled. The Primate of Poland, Archbishop
Uchanski, who was known to be secretly inclined toward the Reformed doctrines,
was favorable to the proposed Convocation. Had such a Council been convened, it
might, as matters then stood, with the first nobles of the land, many of the
great cities, and a large portion of the nation, all on the side of
Protestantism, have had the most decisive effects on the Kingdom of Poland and
its future destinies. "It would have upset," says Krasinski, "the dominion of
Rome in Poland for ever."[5] Rome saw the danger in all
its extent, and sent one of her ablest diplomatists to cope with it. Cardinal
Commendoni, who had given efficient aid to Queen Mary of England in 1553, in her
attempted restoration of Popery, was straightway dispatched to employ his great
abilities in arresting the triumph of Protestantism, and averting ruin from the
Papacy in the Kingdom of Poland. The legate put forth all his dexterity and art
in his important mission, and not without effect. He directed his main efforts
to influence the mind of Sigismund Augustus. He drew with masterly hand a
frightful picture of the revolts and seditions that were sure to follow such a
Council as it was contemplated holding. The warring winds, once let loose, would
never cease to rage till the vessel of the Polish State was driven on the rocks
and shipwrecked. For every concession to the heretics and the blind mob, the
king would have to part with as many rights of his own. His laws contemned, his
throne in the dust, who then would lift him up and give him back his crown? Had
he forgotten the Colloquy of Poissy, which the King of France, then a child, had
been pemuaded to permit to take place? What had that disputation proved but a
trumpet of revolt, which had banished peace from France, not since to return? In
that unhappy country, whose inhabitants were parted by bitter feuds and
contending factions, whose fields were reddened by the sword of civil war, whose
throne was being continually shaken by sedition and revolt, the king might see
the picture of what Poland would become should he give his consent to the
meeting of a Council, where all doctrines would be brought into question, and
all things reformed without reference to the canons of the Church, and the
authority of the Pope. Commendoni was a skillful limner; he made the king hear
the roar of the tempest which he foretold; Sigismund Augustus felt as if his
throne were already rocking beneath him; the peace-loving monarch revoked the
permission he had been on the point of giving; he would not permit the Council
to convene.[6]
If a National
Council could not meet to essay the Reformation of the Church, might it not be
possible, some influential persons now asked, for the three Protestant bodies in
Poland to unite in one Church? Such a union would confer new strength on
Protestantism, would remove the scandal offered by the dissensions of
Protestants among themselves, and would enable them in the day of battle to
unite their arms against the foe, and in the hour of peace to conjoin their
labors in building up their Zion. The Protestant communions in Poland were
lst, the Bohemian; 2ndly, the Reformed or Calvinistic; and 3rdly, the Lutheran.
Between the first and second there was entire agreement in point of doctrine;
only inasmuch as the first pastors of the Bohemian Church had received
ordination (1467) from a Waldensian superintendent, as we have previously
narrated,[7] the Bohemians had come to
lay stress on this, as an order of succession peculiarly sacred. Between the
second and third there was the important divergence on the subject of the
Eucharist. The Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation approached more nearly to
the Roman doctrine of the mass than to the Reformed doctrine of the Lord's
Supper. If change there had been since the days of Luther on the question of
consubstantiation, it was in the direction of still greater rigidity and
tenacity, accompanied with a growing intolerance toward the other branches of
the great Protestant family, of which some melancholy proofs have come before
us. How much the heart of John Alasco was set on healing these divisions, and
how small a measure of success attended his efforts to do so, we have already
seen.
The project was again revived. The main opposition to it came from
the Lutherans. The Bohemian Church now numbered upwards of 200 congregations in
Moravia and Poland,[8] but the Lutherans accused
them of being heretical. Smarting from the reproach, and judging that to clear
their orthodoxy would pave the way for union, the Bohemians submitted their
Confession to the Protestant princes of Germany, and all the leading Reformers
of Europe, including Peter Martyr and Bullinger at Zurich, and Calvin and Beza
at Geneva. A unanimous verdict was returned that the Bohemian Confession was
"conformable to the doctrines of the Gospel."
This judgment silenced for
a time the Lutheran attacks on the purity of the Bohemian creed; but this good
understanding being once more disturbed, the Bohemian Church in 1568 sent a
delegation to Wittemberg, to submit their Confession to the theological faculty
of its university. Again their creed was fully approved of, and this judgment
carrying great weight with the Lutherans, the attacks on the Bohemians from that
time ceased, and the negotiations for union went prosperously forward.
At
last the negotiations bore fruit. In 1569, the leading nobles of the three
communions, having met together at the Diet of Lublin, resolved to take measures
for the consummation of the union. They were the more incited to this by the
hope that the king, who had so often expressed his desire to see the Protestant
Churches of his realm become one, would thereafter declare himself on the side
of Protestantism. It was resolved to hold a Synod or Conference of all three
Churches, and the town of Sandomir was chosen as the place of meeting. The Synod
met in the beginning of April, 1570, and was attended by the Protestant grandees
and nobles of Poland, and by the ministers of the Bohemian, Reformed, and
Lutheran Churches. After several days discussion it was found that the assembly
was of one heart and mind on all the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel; and
all agreement, entitled "Act of the Religious Union between the Churches of
Great and Little Poland, Russia, Lithuania, and Samogitia," was signed on the
14th of April, 1570.[9]
The subscribers
place on the front of their famous document their unanimity in "the doctrines
about God, the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son of God, Justification,
and other principal points of the Christian religion." To give effect to this
unanimity they "enter into a mutual and sacred obligation to defend unanimously,
and according to the injunctions of the Word of God, this their covenant in the
true and pure religion of Christ, against the followers of the Roman Church, the
sectaries, as well as all the enemies of the truth and Gospel."
On the
vexed question of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the United Church agreed
to declare that "the elements are not only elements or vain symbols, but are
sufficient to believers, and impart by faith what they signify." And in order to
express themselves with still greater clearness, they agreed to confess that
"the substantial presence of Christ is not only signified but really represented
in the Communion to those that receive it, and that the body and blood of our
Lord are really distributed and given with the symbols of the thing itself;
which according to the nature of Sacraments are by no means bare
signs."
"But that no disputes," they add, "should originate from a
difference of expressions, it has been resolved to add to the articles inserted
into our Confession, the article of the Confession of the Saxon Churches
relating to the Lord's Supper, which was sent in 1551 to the Council of Trent,
and which we acknowledge as pious, and do receive. Its expressions are as
follows: ' Baptism and the Lord's Supper are signs and testimonies of grace, as
it has been said before, which remind us of the promise and of the redemption,
and show that the benefits of the Gospel belong to all those that make use of
these rites... In the established use of the Communion, Christ is substantially
present, and the body and blood of Christ are truly given to those who receive
the Communion.'" [10]
The confederating
Churches further agreed to "abolish and bury in eternal oblivion all the
contentions, troubles, and dissensions which have hitherto impeded the progress
of the Gospel," and leaving free each Church to administer its own discipline
and practice its own rites, deeming these of "little importance" provided "the
foundation of our faith and salvation remain pure and unadulterated," they say:
"Having mutually given each other our hands, we have made a sacred promise
faithfully to maintain the peace and faith, and to promote it every day more and
more for the edification of the Word of God, and carefully to avoid all
occasions of dissension."[11]
There follows a
long and brilliant list of palatines, nobles, superintendents, pastors, elders,
and deacons belonging to all the three communions, who, forgetting the
party-questions that had divided them, gathered round this one standard, and
giving their hands to one another, and lifting them up to heaven, vowed
henceforward to be one and to contend only against the common foe. This was one
of the triumphs of Protestantism. Its spirit now gloriously prevailed over the
pride of church, the rivalry of party, and the narrowness of bigotry, and in
this victory gave an augury alas! never to be fulfilled of a yet greater
triumph in days to come, by which this was to be completed and
crowned.
Three years later (1573) a great Protestant Convocation was held
at Cracow. It was presided over by John Firley, Grand Marshal of Poland, a
leading member of the Calvinistic communion, and the most influential grandee of
the kingdom. The regulations enacted by this Synod sufficiently show the goal at
which it was anxious to arrive. It aimed at reforming the nation in life as well
as in creed. It forbade "all kinds of wickedness and luxury, accursed gluttony
and inebriety." It prohibited lewd dances, games of chance, profane oaths, and
night assemblages in taverns. It enjoined landowners to treat their peasants
with "Christian charity and humanity," to exact of them no oppressive labor or
heavy taxes, to permit no markets or fairs to be held upon their estates on
Sunday, and to demand no service of their peasants on that day. A Protestant
creed was but the means for creating a virtuous and Christian
people.
There is no era like this, before or since, in the annals of
Poland. Protestantism had reached its acme in that country. Its churches
numbered upwards of 2,000. They were at peace and flourishing. Their membership
included the first dignitaries of the crown and the first nobles of the land. In
some parts Romanism almost entirely disappeared. Schools were planted throughout
the country, and education flourished. The Scriptures were translated into the
tongue of the people, the reading of them was encouraged as the most efficient
weapon against the attacks of Rome. Latin was already common, but now Greek and
Hebrew began to be studied, that direct access might be had to the Divine
fountains of truth and salvation. The national intellect, invigorated by
Protestant truth, began to expatiate in fields that had been neglected hitherto.
The printing-press, which rusts Unused where Popery dominates, was vigorously
wrought, and sent forth works on science, jurisprudence, theology, and general
literature. This was the Augustan era of letters in Poland. The toleration which
was so freely accorded in that country drew thither crowds of refugees, whom
persecution had driven from their homes, and who, carrying with them the arts
and manufactures of their own lands, enriched Poland with a material prosperity
which, added to the political power and literary glory that already encompassed
her, raised her to a high pitch of greatness.
CHAPTER 4
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Top
ORGANISATION OF THE
PROTESTANT CHURCH OF POLAND.
Several Church Organisations in Poland
Causes Church Government in Poland a Modified Episcopacy The Superintendent
His Powers The Senior, etc. The Civil Senior The Synod the Supreme
Authority Local and Provincial Synods General Convocation-Two Defects in
this Organisation Death of Sigismund Augustus Who shall Succeed him?
Coligny proposes the Election of a French Prince Montluc sent as Ambassador to
Poland Duke of Anjou Elected Pledges Attempted Treacheries Coronation
Henry Attempts to Evade the Oath Firmness of the Polish Protestants The
King's Unpopularity and Flight.
The short-lived golden age of Poland was now waning
into the silver one. But before recording the slow gathering of the shadows
-the passing of the day into twilight, and the deepening of the twilight into
night we must cast a momentary glance, first, at the constitution of the
Polish Protestant Church as seen at this the period of her fullest development;
and secondly, at certain political events, which bore with powerful effect upon
the Protestant character of the nation, and sealed the fate of Poland as a free
country.
In its imperfect unity we trace the absence of a master-hand in
the construction of the Protestant Church of Poland. Had one great mind led in
the Reformation of that country, one system of ecclesiastical government would
doubtless from the first have been given to all Poland. As it was, the
organisation of its Church at the beginning, and in a sense all throughout,
differed in different provinces. Other causes, besides the want of a great
leader, contributed to this diversity in respect of ecclesiastical government.
The nobles were allowed to give what order they pleased to the Protestant
churches which they erected on their lands, but the same liberty was not
extended to the inhabitants of towns, and hence very considerable diversity in
the ecclesiastical arrangements. This diversity was still farther increased by
the circumstance that not one, but three Confessions had gained ground in Poland
the Bohemian, the Genevan, and the Lutheran. The necessity of a more perfect
organ-isation soon came to be felt, and repeated attempts were made at.
successive Synods to unify the Church's government. A great step was taken in
this direction at the Synod of Kosmin, in 1555, when a union was concluded
between the Bohemian and Genevan Confessions; and a still greater advance was
made in 1570, as we have narrated in the preceding chapter, when at the Synod of
Sandomir the three Protestant Churches of Poland the Bohemian, the Genevan,
and the Lutheran agreed to merge all their Confessions in one creed, and
combine their several organisations in one government.
But even this was
only an approximation, not a full and complete attainment of the object aimed
at. All Poland was not yet ruled spiritually from one ecclesiastical centre; for
the three great political divisions of the country Great Poland, Little
Poland, and Lithuania had each its independent ecclesiastical establishment,
by which all its religious affairs were regulated. Nevertheless, at intervals,
or when some matter of great moment arose, all the pastors of the kingdom came
together in Synod, thus presenting a grand Convocation of all the Protestant
Churches of Poland.
Despite this tri-partition in the ecclesiastical
authority, one form of Church government now extended over all Poland. That form
was a modified episcopacy. If any one man was entitled to be styled the Father
of the Polish Protestant Church it was John Alasco, and the organisation which
he gave to the Reformed Church of his native land was not unlike that of
England, of which he was a great admirer. Poland was on a great scale what the
foreign Church over which John Alasco presided in London was on a small. First
came the Superintendent, for Alasco preferred that term, though the more learned
one of Senior Primarius was sometimes used to designate this dignitary. The
Superintendent, or Senior Primarius, corresponded somewhat in rank and powers to
an archbishop. He convoked Synods, presided in them, and executed their
sentences; but he had no judicial authority, and was subject to the Synod, which
could judge, admonish, and depose him.[1]
Over the Churches
of a district a Sub-Superintendent, or Senior, presided. The Senior corresponded
to a bishop. He took the place of the Superintendent in his absence; he convoked
the Synods of the district, and possessed a certain limited jurisdiction, though
exclusively spiritual. The other ecclesiastical functionaries were the Minister,
the Deacon, and the Lecturer. The Polish Protestants eschewed the fashion and
order of the Roman hierarchy, and strove to reproduce as far as the
circumstances of their times would allow, or as they themselves were able to
trace it, the model exhibited in the primitive Church.
Besides the
Clerical Senior each district had a Civil Senior, who was elected exclusively by
the nobles and landowners. His duties about the Church were mainly of an
external nature. All things appertaining to faith and doctrine were left
entirely in the hands of the ministers; but the Civil Senior took cognisance of
the morals of ministers, and in certain cases could forbid them the exercise of
their functions till he had reported the case to the Synod, as the supreme
authority of the Church. The support and general welfare of churches and schools
were entrusted to the Civil Senior, Who, moreover, acted as advocate for the
Church before the authorities of the country.
The supreme authority in
the Polish Protestant Church was neither the Superintendent nor the Civil
Senior, but the Synod. Four times every year a Local Synod, composed not of
ministers only, but of all the members of the congregations, was convened in
each district. Although the members sat along with the pastors, all questions of
faith and doctrine were left to be determined exclusively by the latter. Once a
year a Provincial Synod was held, in which each district was represented by a
Clerical Senior, two Con-Seniors, or assistants, and four Civil Seniors; thus
giving a slight predominance to the lay element in the Synod. Nevertheless,
ministers, although not delegated by the Local Synods, could sit and vote on
equal terms with others in the Provincial Synod.
The Grand Synod of the
nation, or Convocation of the Polish Church, met at no stated times. It
assembled only when the emergence of some great question called for its
decision. These great gatherings, of course, could take place only so long as
the Union of Sandomir, which bound in one Church all the Protestant Confessions
of Poland, existed, and that unhappily was only from 1570 to 1595. After the
expiry of these twenty-five years those great national gatherings, which had so
impressively attested the strength and grandeur of Protestantism in Poland, were
seen no more. Such in outline was the constitution and government of the
Protestant Church of Poland. It wanted only two things to make it complete and
perfect namely, one supreme court, or center of authority, with jurisdiction
covering the whole country; and a permanent body or "Board," having its seat in
the capital, through which the Church might take instant action when great
difficulties called for united councils, or sudden dangers necessitated united
arms. The meetings of the Grand Synods were intermittent and irregular, whereas
their enemies never failed to maintain union among themselves, and never ceased
their attacks upon the Protestant Church.
We must now turn to the course
of political affairs subsequent to the death of King Sigismund Augustus, of
which, however, we shall treat only so far as they grew out of Protestantism,
and exerted a reflex influence upon it. The amiable; enlightened, and tolerant
monarch, Sigismund Augustus, so often almost persuaded to be a Protestant, and
one day, as his courtiers fondly hoped, to become one in reality, went to his
grave in 1572, without having come to any decision, and without leaving any
issue.
The Protestants were naturally desirous of placing a Protestant
upon the throne; but the intrigues of Cardinal Commendoni, and the jealousy of
the Lutherans against the Reformed, which the Union of Sandomir had not entirely
extinguished, rendered all efforts towards this effect in vain. Meanwhile
Coligny, whom the Peace of St. Germains had restored to the court of Paris, and
for the moment to influence, came forward with the proposal of placing a French
prince upon the throne of Poland. The admiral was revolving a gigantic scheme
for humbling Romanism, and its great champion, Spain. He meditated bringing
together in a political and religious alliance the two great countries of Poland
and France, and Protestantism once triumphant in both, an issue which to Coligny
seemed to be near, the united arms of the two countries would soon put an end to
the dominancy of Rome, and lay in the dust the overgrown power of Austria and
Spain. Catherine de Medici, who saw in the project a new aggrandisement to her
family, warmly favored it; and Montluc, Bishop of Valence, was dispatched to
Poland, furnished with ample instructions from Coligny to prosecute the election
of Henry of Valois, Duke of Anjou. Montluc had hardly crossed the frontier when
the St. Bartholomew was struck, and among the many victims of that dreadful act
was the author of that very scheme which Montluc was on his way to advocate and,
if possible, consummate. The bishop, on receiving the terrible news, thought it
useless to continue his journey; but Catherine, feeling the necessity of
following the line of foreign policy which had been originated by the man she
had murdered, sent orders to Montluc to go forward.
The ambassador had
immense dimculties to overcome in the prosecution of his mission, for the
massacre had inspired universal horror, but by dint of stoutly denying the Duke
of Anjou's participation in the crime, and promising that the duke would
subscribe every guarantee of political and religious liberty which might be
required of him, he finally carried his object. Firley, the leader of the
Protestants, drafted a list of privileges which Anjou was to grant to the
Protestants of Poland, and of concessions which Charles IX. was to make to the
Protestants of France; and Montluc was required to sign these, or see the
rejection of his candidate. The ambassador promised for the
monarch.
Henry of Valois having been chosen, four ambassadors set out
from Poland with the diploma of election, which was presented to the duke on the
10th September, 1573, in Notre Dame, Paris. A Romish bishop, and member of the
embassy, entered a protest, at the beginning of the ceremonial, against that
clause in the oath which secured religious liberty, and which the duke was now
to swear. Some confusion followed. The Protestant Zborowski, interrupting the
proceedings, addressed Montluc thus:~"Had you not accepted, in the name of the
duke, these conditions, we should not have elected him as our monarch." Henry
feigned not to understand the subject of dispute, but Zborowski, advancing
towards him, said "I repeat, sire, if your ambassador had not accepted the
condition securing religious liberty to us Protestants, we would not have
elected you to be our king, and if you do not confirm these conditions you shall
not be our king." Thereupon Henry took the oath. When he had sworn, Bishop
Karnkowski, who had protested against the religious liberty promised in the
oath, stepped forward, and again protested that the clause should not prejudice
the authority of the Church of Rome, and he received from the king a written
declaration to the effect that it would not.[2]
Although the
sovereign-elect had confirmed by oath the religious liberties of Poland, the
suspicions of the Protestants were not entirely allayed, and they resolved
jealously to watch the proceedings at the coronation. Their distrust was not
without cause. Cardinal Hosius, who had now begun to exercise vast influence on
the affairs of Poland, reasoned that the oath that Henry had taken in Paris was
not binding, and he sent his secretary to meet the new monarch on the road to
his new dominions, and to assure him that he did not even need absolution from
what he had sworn, seeing what was unlawful was not binding, and that as soon as
he should be crowned, he might proceed, the oath notwithstanding, to drive from
his kingdom all religions contrary to that of Rome.[3] The bishops began to teach
the same doctrine and to instruct Henry, who was approaching Poland by slow
stages, that he would mount the throne as an absolute sovereign, and reign
wholly unfettered and uncontrolled by either the oath of Paris or the Polish
Diet. The kingdom was in dismay and alarm; the Protestants talked of annulling
the election, and refusing to accept Henry as their sovereign. Poland was on the
brink of civil war.
At the coronation a new treachery was attempted.
Tutored by Jesuitical councillors, Henry proposed to assume the crown, but to
evade the oath. The ceremonial was proceeding, intently watched by both
Protestants and Romanists. The final act was about to be performed; the crown
was to be placed on the head of the new sovereign; but the oath guaranteeing the
Protestant liberties had not been administered to him. Firley, the Grand Marshal
of Poland, and first grandee of the kingdom, stood forth, and stopping the
proceedings, declared that unless the Duke of Anjou should repeat the oath which
he had sworn at Paris, he would not allow the coronation to take place. Henry
was kneeling on the steps of the altar, but startled by the words, he rose up,
and looking round him, seemed to hesitate. Firley, seizing the crown, said in a
firm voice, "Si non jurabis, non regnabis" (If you will not swear, you shall not
reign). The courtiers and spectators were mute with astonishment. The king was
awed; he read in the crest-fallen countenances of his advisers that he had but
one alternative the oath, or an ignominious return to France. It was too soon to
go back; he took the copy of the oath which was handed to him, swore, and was
crowned.
The courageous act of the Protestant grand marshal had dispelled
the cloud of civil war that hung above the nation. But it was only for a moment
that confidence was restored. The first act of the new sovereign had revealed
him to his subjects as both treacherous and cowardly; what trust could they
repose in him, and what affection could they feel for him? Henry took into
exclusive favor the Popish bishops; and, emboldened by a patronage unknown to
them during former reigns, they boldly declared the designs they had long
harboured, but which they had hitherto only whispered to their most trusted
confidants. The great Protestant nobles were discountenanced and discredited.
The king's shameless profligacies consummated the discontent and disgust of the
nation. The patriotic Firley was dead it was believed in many quarters that he
had been poisoned and civil war was again on the point of breaking out when,
fortunately for the unhappy country, the flight of the monarch saved it from
that great calamity. His brother, Charles IX., had died, and Anjou took his
secret and quick departure to succeed him on the throne of
France.
CHAPTER 5
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TURNING OF THE TIDE OF PROTESTANTISM IN
POLAND.
Stephen Bathory Elected to the Throne His Midnight
Interview Abandons Protestantism, and becomes a Romanist Takes the Jesuits
under his Patronage Builds and Endows Colleges for them Roman Synod of
Piotrkow Subtle Policy of the Bishops for Recovering their Temporal
Jurisdiction Temporal Ends gained by Spiritual Sanctions Spiritual Terrors
versus Temporal Punishments Begun Decadence of Poland Last Successes of its
Arms Death of King Stephen Sigismund III. Succeeds " The King of the
Jesuits."
After a year's interregnum, Stephen Bathory, a
Transylvanian prince, who had married Anne Jagellon, one of the sisters of the
Emperor Sigismund Augustus, was elected to the crown of Poland. His worth was so
great, and his popularity so high, that although a Protestant the Roman clergy
dared not oppose his election. The Protestant nobles thought that now their
cause was gained; but the Romanists did not despair. Along with the delegates
commissioned to announce his election to Bathory, they sent a prelate of eminent
talent and learning, Solikowski by name, to conduct their intrigue of bringing
the new king over to their side. The Protestant deputies, guessing Solikowski's
errand, were careful to give him no opportunity of conversing with the new
sovereign in private. But, eluding their vigilance, he obtained an interview by
night, and succeeded in persuading Bathory that he should never be able to
maintain, himself on the throne of Poland unless he made a public profession of
the Roman faith. The Protestant deputies, to their dismay, next morning beheld
Stephen Bathory, in whom they had placed their hopes of triumph, devoutly
kneeling at mass.[1] The new reign had opened
with no auspicious omen!
Nevertheless, although a pervert, Bathory did
not become a zealot. He repressed all attempts at persecution, and tried to hold
the balance with tolerable impartiality between the two parties. But he sowed
seeds destined to yield tempests in the future. The Jesuits, as we shall
afterwards see, had already entered Poland, and as the Fathers were able to
persuade the king that they were the zealous cultivators and the most efficient
teachers of science and letters, Bathory, who was a patron of literature, took
them under his patronage, and built colleges and seminaries for their use,
endowing them with lands and heritages. Among other institutions he founded the
University of Vilna, which became the chief seat of the Fathers in Poland, and
whence they spread themselves over the kingdom.[2]
It was during the
reign of King Stephen that the tide began to turn in the fortunes of this great,
intelligent, and free nation. The ebb first showed itself in a piece of subtle
legislation which was achieved by the Roman Synod of Piotrkow, in 1577. That
Synod decreed excommunication against all who held the doctrine of religious
toleration [3] But toleration of all
religions was one of the fundamental laws of the kingdom, and the enactment of
the Synod was levelled against this law. True, they could not blot out the law
of the State, nor could they compel the tribunals of the nation to enforce their
own ecclesiastical edict; nevertheless their sentence, though spiritual in its
form, was very decidedly temporal in both its substance and its issues, seeing
excommunication carried with it many grievous civil and social inflictions. This
legislation was the commencement of a stealthy policy which had for its object
the recovery of that temporal jurisdiction of which, as we have seen, the Diet
had stripped them.
This first encroachnlent being permitted to pass
unchallenged, the Roman clergy ventured on other and more violent attacks on the
laws of the State, and the liberties of the people. The Synods of the diocese of
Warmia prohibited mixed marriages; they forbade Romanists to be sponsors at the
baptism of Protestant children; they interdicted the use of books and hymns not
sanctioned by ecclesiastical authority; and they declared heretics incapable of
inheriting landed property. All these enactments wore a spiritual guise, and
they could be enforced only by spiritual sanctions; but they were in antagonism
to the law of the land, and by implication branded the laws with which they
conflicted as immoral; they tended to widen the breach between the two great
parties hi the nation, and they disturbed the consciences of Romanists, by
subjecting them to the alternative of incurring certain disagreeable
consequences, or of doing what they were taught was unlawful and
sinful.
Stretching their powers and prerogatives still farther, the Roman
bishops now claimed payment of their tithes from Protestant landlords, and
attempted to take back the churches which had been converted front Romanist to
Protestant uses. To make trial of how far the nation was disposed to yield to
these demands, or the tribunals prepared to endorse them, they entered pleas at
law to have the goods and possessions which they claimed as theirs adjudged to
them, and in some instances the courts gave decisions in their favour. But the
hierarchy had gone farther than meanwhile was prudent. These arrogant demands
roused the alarm of the nobles; and the Diets of 1581 and 1582 administered a
tacit rebuke to the hierarchy by annulling the judgments which had been
pronounced in their favor. The bishops had learned that they must walk slowly if
they would walk safely; but they had met with nothing to convince them that
their course was not the right one, or that it would not succeed in the
end.
Nevertheless, under the appearance of having suffered a rebuff, the
hierarchy had gained not a few substantial advantages. The more extreme of their
demands had been disallowed, and many thought that; the contest between them and
the civil courts was at an end, and that it had ended adversely to the spiritual
authority; but the bishops knew better. They had laid the foundation of what
would grow with every successive Synod, and each new edict, into a body of law,
diverse from and in opposition to the law of the land, and which presenting
itself to the Romanist with a higher moral sanction, would ultimately, in his
eyes, deprive the civil law of all force, and transfer to itself the homage of
his conscience and the obedience of his life. The coercive power wielded by this
new code, which was being stealthily put in operation in the heart of the Polish
State, was a power that could neither be seen nor heard; and those who were
accustomed to execute their behests through the force of armies, or the majesty
of tribunals, were apt to contemn it as utterly unable to cope with the power of
law; nevertheless, the result as wrought out in Poland showed that this
influence, apparently so weak, yet penetrating deeply into the heart and soul,
had in it an omnipotence compared with which the power of the sword was but
feebleness. And farther there was this danger, perhaps not foreseen or not much
taken into account in Poland at the moment, namely, that the Jesuits were busy
manipulating the youth, and that whenever public opinion should be ripe for a
concordat between the bishops and the Government, this spiritual code would
start up into an undisguisedly temporal one, having at its service all the
powers of the State, and enforcing its commands with the sword.
What was
now introduced into Poland was a new and more refined policy than the Church of
Rome had as yet employed in her battles with Protestantism. Hitherto she had
filled her hand with the coarse weapons of material force the armies of the
Empire and the stakes of the Inquisition. But now, appealing less to the bodily
senses, and more to the faculties of the soul, she began at Trent, and continued
in Poland, the plan of creating a body of legislation, the pseudo-divine
sanctions of which, in many instances, received submission where the terrors of
punishment would have been withstood. The sons of Loyola came first, moulding
opinion'; and the bishops came after, framing canons in conformity with that
altered opinions-gathering where the others had strewed and noiselessly
achieving victory where the swords of their soldiers would have but sustained
defeat. No doubt the liberty enjoyed in Poland necessitated this alteration of
the Roman tactics; but it was soon seen that it was a more effectual method than
the vulgar weapons of force, and that if a revolted Christendom was to be
brought back to the Papal obedience, it must be mainly, though not exclusively,
by the means of this spiritual artillery.
It was under the same reign,
that of Stephen Bathory, that the political influence of the Kingdom of Poland
began to wane. The ebb in its national prestige was almost immediately
consequent on the ebb in its Protestantism. The victorious wars which Bathory
had carried on with Russia were ended, mainly through the counsels of the Jesuit
Possevinus, by a peace which stripped Poland of the advantages she was entitled
to expect from her victories. This was the last gleam of military success that
shone upon the country. Stephen Bathory died in 1586, having reigned ten years,
not without glory, and was succeeded on the throne of Poland by Sigismund III.
He was the son of John, King of Sweden, and grandson of the renowned Gustavus
Vasa. Nurtured by a Romish mother, Sigismund III. had abandoned the faith of his
famous ancestor, and during his long reign of well-nigh half a century, he made
the grandeur of Rome his first object, and the power of Poland only his second.
Under such a prince the fortunes of the nation continued to sink. He was called
"the King of the Jesuits," and so far was he from being ashamed of the title,
that he gloried in it, and strove to prove himself worthy of it. He surrounded
himself with Jesuit councillors; honors and riches he showered almost
exclusively upon Romanists, and especially upon those whom interest had
converted, but argument left unconvinced. No dignity of the State and no post in
the public service was to be obtained, unless the aspirant made friends of the
Fathers. Their colleges and schools multiplied, their hoards and territorial
domains augmented from year to year. The education of the youth, and especially
the sons of the nobles, was almost wholly in their hands, and a generation was
being created brimful of that "loyalty" which Rome so highly lauds, and which
makes the understandings of her subjects so obdurate and their necks so supple.
The Protestants were as yet too powerful in Poland to permit of direct
persecution, but the way was being prepared in the continual decrease of their
numbers, and the systematic diminution of their influence; and when Sigismund
III. went to his grave in 1632, the glory which had illuminated the country
during the short reign of Stephen Bathory had departed, and the night was fast
closing in around Poland.
CHAPTER 6
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THE JESUITS ENTER
POLAND DESTRUCTION OF ITS PROTESTANTISM.
Cardinal Hosius His
Acquirements Prodigious Activity Brings the Jesuits into Poland They rise
to vast Influence Their Tactics Mingle in all Circles Labour to Undermine
the Influence of Protestant Ministers Extraordinary Methods of doing this
Mob Violence Churches, etc., Burned Graveyards Violated The Jesuits in the
Saloons of the Great Their Schools and Method of Teaching They Dwarf the
National Mind They Extinguish Literature Testimony of a Popish Writer
Reign of Vladislav John Casimir, a Jesuit, ascends the Throne Political
Calamities-Revolt of the Cossacks Invasion of the Russians and Swedes
Continued Decline of Protestantism and Oppression of Protestants Exhaustion
and Ruin of Poland Causes which contributed along with the Jesuits to the
Overthrow of Protestantism in Poland.
The Jesuits had been introduced into Poland, and the
turning of the Protestant tide, and the begun decadence of the nation's
political power, which was almost contemporaneous with the retrogression in its
Protestantism, was mainly the work of the Fathers. The man who opened the door
to the disciples of Loyola in that country is worthy of a longer study than we
can bestow upon him. His name was Stanislaus Hosen, better known as Cardinal
Hosius. He was born at Cracow in 1504, and thus in birth was nearly
contemporaneous with Knox and Calvin. He was sprung of a family of German
descent which had been engaged in trade, and become rich. His great natural
powers had been perfected by a finished education, first in the schools of his
own country, and afterwards in the Italian universities. He was unwearied in his
application to business, often dictating to several secretaries at once, and not
unfrequently dispatching important matters at meals, He was at home in the
controversial literature of the Reformation, and knew how to employ in his own
cause the arguments of one Protestant polemic against another. He took care to
inform himself of everything about the life and occupation of the leading
Reformers, his contemporaries, which it was important for him to
know.
His works are numerous; they are in various languages, written with
equal elegance in all, and with a wonderful adaptation in their style and method
to the genius and habit of thought of each of the various peoples he addressed.
The one grand object of his life was the overthrow of Protestantism, and the
restoration of the Roman Church to that place of power and glory from which the
Reformation had cast her down. He brought the concentrated forces of a vast
knowledge, a gigantic intellect, and a strong will to the execution of that
task. History has not recorded, so far as we are aware, any immorality in his
life. He could boast the refined manners, liberal sentiments, and humane
disposition which the love and cultivation of letters usually engender.
Nevertheless the marvellous and mysterious power of that system of which he was
so distinguished a champion asserted its superiority in the case of this richly
endowed, highly cultivated, and noble-minded man. Instead of imparting his
virtues to his Church, she transferred her vices to hint. Hosius always urged on
fitting occasions that no faith should be kept with heretics, and although few
could better conduct an argument than himself, he disliked that tedious process
with heretics, and recommended the more summary one of the lictor's axe. He saw
no sin in spilling heretical blood; he received with joy the tidings of the St.
Bartholomew Massacre, and writing to congratulate the Cardinal of Lorraine on
the slaughter of Coligny, he thanked the Almighty for the great boon bestowed on
France, and implored him to show equal mercy to Poland. His great understanding
he prostrated at the feet of his Church, but for whose authority, he declared,
the Scriptures would have no more weight than the Fables of Aesop. His many
acquirements and great learning were not able to emancipate him from the thrall
of a gloomy asceticism; he grovelled in the observance of the most austere
performances, scouring himself in the belief that to have his body streaming
with blood and covered with wounds was more pleasing to the Almighty than to
have his soul adorned with virtues and replenished with graces. Such was the man
who, to use the words of the historian Krasinski, "deserved the eternal
gratitude of Rome and the curses of his own country," by introducing the Jesuits
into Poland.[1]
Returning from the
Council of Trent in 1564, Hosius saw with alarm the advance which Protestantism
had made in his diocese during his absence. He immediately addressed himself to
the general of the society, Lainez, requesting him to send him some members of
his order to aid him in doing what he despaired of accomplishing by his own
single arm. A few of the Fathers were dispatched from Rome, and being joined by
others from Germany, they were located in Braunsberg, a little town in the
diocese of Hosius, who richly endowed the infant establishment. For six years
they made little progress, nor was it till the death of Sigismund Augustus and
the accession of Stephen Bathory that they began to make their influence felt in
Poland. How they ingratiated themselves with that monarch by their vast
pretensions to learning we have already seen. They became great favourites with
the bishops, who finding Protestantism increasing in their dioceses, looked for
its repression rather from the intrigues of the Fathers than the labors of their
own clergy. But the golden age of the Jesuits in Poland, to be followed by the
iron age to the people, did not begin until the bigoted Sigismund III. mounted
the throne. The favors of Stephen Bathory, the colleges he had founded, and the
lands with which he had endowed them, were not remembered in comparison with the
far higher consideration and vaster wealth to which they were admitted under his
successor. Sigismund reigned, but the Jesuits governed. They stood by the
fountain-head of honours, and they held the keys of all dignities and
emoluments. They took care of their friends in the distribution of these good
things, nor did they forget when enriching others to enrich also themselves.
Conversions were numerous; and the wanderer who had returned from the fatal path
of heresy to the safe fold of the Church was taught to express his thanks in
some gift or service to the order by whose instructions and prayers he had been
rescued. The son of a Protestant father commonly expressed his penitence by
building them a college, or bequeathing them an estate, or expelling from his
lands the confessors of his father's faith, and replacing them with the
adherents of the Roman creed. Thus all things were prospering to their wish.
Every day new doors were opening to them. Their missions and schools were
springing up in all corners of the land. They entered all houses, from the
baron's downward; they sat at all tables, and listened to all conversations. In
all assemblies, for whatever purpose convened, whether met to mourn or to make
merry, to transact business or to seek amusement, there were the Jesuits. They
were present at baptisms, at marriages, at funerals, and at fairs. While their
learned men taught the young nobles in the universities, they had their
itinerant orators, who visited villages, frequented markets, and erecting their
stage in public exhibited scenic representations of Bible histories, or of the
combats, martyrdoms, and canonisations of the saints. These wandering apostles
were furnished, moreover, with store of relics and wonder-working charms, and by
these as well as by pompous processions, they edified and awed the crowds that
gathered round them. They strenuously and systematically labored to destroy the
influence of Protestant ministers. They strove; to make them odious, sometimes
by malevolent whisperings, and at other times by open accusations. The most
blameless life and the most venerated character afforded no protection against
Jesuit calumny. Volanus, whose ninety years bore witness to his abstemious life,
they called a drunkard. Sdrowski, who had incurred their anger by a work written
against them, and whose learning was not excelled by the most erudite of their
order, they accused of theft, and of having once acted the part of a hangman.
Adding ridicule to calumny, they strove in every way to hold up Protestant
sermons and assemblies to laughter. If a Synod convened, there was sure to
appear, in no long time, a letter from the devil, addressed to the members of
court, thanking them for their zeal, and instructing them, in familiar and
loving phrase, how to do their work and his. Did a minister marry, straightway
he was complimented with an epithalamium from the ready pen of some Jesuit
scribe. Did a Protestant pastor die, before a few days had passed by, the
leading members of his flock were favored with letters from their deceased
minister, duly dated from Pandemonium. These effusions were composed generally
in doggerel verse, but they were barbed with a venomous wit and a coarse humor.
The multitude read, laughed, and believed. The calumnies, it is true, were
refitted by those at whom they were levelled; but that signified little, the
falsehood was repeated again and again, till at last, by dint of perseverance
and audacity, the Protestants and their worship were brought into general hatred
and contempt.[2]
The defection of
the sons of Radziwill, the zealous Reformer of whom we have previously made
mention, was a great blow to the Protestantism of Poland. That family became the
chief support, after the crown, of the Papal reaction in the Polish dominions.
Not only were their influence and wealth freely employed for the spread of the
Jesuits, but all the Protestant churches and schools which their father had
built on his estates were made over to the Church of Rome. The example of the
Radziwills was followed by many of the Lithuanian nobles, who returned within
the Roman pale, bringing with them not only the edifices on their lands formerly
used in the Protestant service, but their tenants also, and expelling those who
refused to conform.
By this time the populace had been sufficiently
leavened with the spirit and principles of the Jesuits to be made their tool.
Mob violence is commonly the first form that persecution assumes. It was so in
Poland. The caves whence these popular tempests issued were the Jesuit colleges.
The students inflamed the passions of the multitude, and the public peace was
broken by tumult and outrage. Protestant worshipping assemblies began to be
assailed and dispersed, Protestant churches to be wrecked, and Protestant
libraries to be given to the flames. The churches of Cracow, of Vilna, and other
towns were pillaged. Protestant cemeteries were violated, their monuments and
tablets destroyed, the dead exhumed, and their remains scattered about. It was
not possible at times to carry the Protestant dead to their graves. In June,
1578, the funeral procession of a Protestant lady was attacked in the streets of
Cracow by the pupils of All-hallows College. Stones were thrown, the attendants
were driven away, the body was torn from the coffin, and after being dragged
through the streets it was thrown into the Vistula. Rarely indeed did the
authorities interfere; and when it did happen that punishment followed these
misdeeds, the infliction fell on the wretched tools, and the guiltier
instigators and ringleaders were suffered to escape.[3]
While the Jesuits
were smiting the Protestant ministers and members with the arm of the mob, they
were bowing the knee in adulation and flattery before the Protestant nobles and
gentry. In the saloons of the great, the same men who sowed from their chairs
the principles of sedition and tumult, or vented in doggerel rhyme the odious
calumny, were transformed into paragons of mildness and inoffensiveness. Oh, how
they loved order, abominated coarseness, and anathematised all uncharitableness
and violence! Having gained access into Protestant families of rank by their
winning manners, their showy accomplishments, and sometimes by important
services, they strove by every means by argument, by wit, by insinuation to
convert them to the Roman faith; if they failed to pervert the entire family
they generally succeeded with one or more of its members. Thus they established
a foothold in the household, and had fatally broken the peace and confidence of
the family. The anguish of the perverts for their parents, doomed as they
believed to perdition, often so affected these parents as to induce them to
follow their children into the Roman fold. Rome, as is well known, has made more
victories by touching the heart than by convincing the reason.
But the
main arm with which the Jesuits operated in Poland was the school. They had
among them a few men of good talent and great erudition. At the beginning they
were at pains to teach well, and to send forth from their seminaries
accomplished Latin scholars, that so they might establish a reputation for
efficient teaching, and spread their educational institutions over the kingdom.
They were kind to their pupils, they gave their instructions without exacting
any fee; and they were thus able to compete at great advantage with the
Protestant schools, and not unfrequently did they succeed in extinguishing their
rivals, and drafting the scholars into their own seminaries. Not only so: many
Protestant parents, attracted by the high repute of the Jesuit schools, and the
brilliant Latin scholars whom they sent forth from time to time, sent their sons
to be educated in the institutions of the Fathers.
But the national mind
did not grow, nor did the national literature flourish. This was the more
remarkable from contrast with the brilliance of the era that had preceded the
educational efforts of the Jesuits. The half-century during which the Protestant
influence was the predominating one was "the Augustan age of Polish literature;"
the half-century that followed, dating from the close of the sixteenth century,
showed a marked and most melancholy decadence in every department of mental
exertion. It was but too obvious that decrepitude had smitten the national
intellect. The press sent forth scarcely a single work of merit; capable men
were disappearing from professional life; Poland ceased to have statesmen fitted
to counsel in the cabinet, or soldiers able to lead in the field. The sciences
were neglected and the arts languished; and even the very language was becoming
corrupt and feeble; its elegance and fire were sinking in the ashes of formalism
and barbarism. Nor is it difficult to account for this. Without freedom there
can be no vigour; but the Jesuits dared not leave the mind of their pupils at
liberty. That the intellect should make full proof of its powers by ranging
freely over all subjects, and investigating and discussing unfettered all
questions, was what the Jesuits could not allow, well knowing that such freedom
would overthrow their own authority. They led about the mind in chains as men do
wild beasts, of whom they fear that should they slip their fetters, they would
turn and rend them. The art they studied was not how to educate, but how not to
educate. They intrigued to shut up the Protestant schools, and when they had
succeeded, they collected the youth into their own, that they might keep them
out of the way of that most dangerous of all things, knowledge. They taught them
words, not things. They shut the page of history, they barred the avenues of
science and philosophy, and they drilled their pupils exclusively in the
subtleties of a scholastic theology. Is it wonderful that the eye kept
perpetually poring on such objects should at last lose its power of vision; that
the intellect confined to food like this should pine and die; and that the
foot-prints of Poland ceased to be visible in the fields of literature, in the
world of commerce, and on the arena of politics? The men who had taken in hand
to educate the nation, taught it to forget all that other men strive to
remember, and to remember all that other men strive to forget; in short, the
education given to Poland by the Jesuits was a most ingenious and successful
plan of teaching them not how to think right, but how to think wrong; not how to
reason out truth, but how to reason out falsehood; not how to cast away
prejudice, break the shackles of authority, and rise to the independence and
noble freedom of a rational being, but how to cleave to error, hug one's
fetters, hoot at the light, and yet to be all the while filled with a proud
conceit that this darkness is not darkness, but light; and this folly not folly,
but wisdom. Thus metamorphosed this once noble nation came forth from the
schools of the Jesuits, the light of their eye quenched, and the strength of
their arm dried up, to find that they were no longer able to keep their place in
the struggles of the world. They were put aside, they were split up, they were
trampled down, and at last they perished as a nation; and yet their remains were
not put into the sepulcher, but were left lying on the face of Europe, a
melancholy monument of what nations become when they take the Jesuit for their
schoolmaster.
This estimate of Jesuit teaching is not more severe than
that which Popish authors themselves have expressed. Their system was admirably
described by Broscius, a zealous Roman Catholic clergyman, professor in the
University of Cracow, and one of the most learned men of his time, in a work
published originally in Polish, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. He
says: "The Jesuits teach children the grammar of Alvar,[4] which it is very difficult
to understand and to learn; and much time is spent at it. This they do for many
reasons: first, that by keeping the child a long time in the school they may
receive in gifts from the parents of the children, whom they pretend
gratuitously to educate, much more than they would have got had there been a
regular payment; second, that by keeping the children a long while in the school
they may become well acquainted with their minds; third, that they may train the
boy for their own plans, and for their own purposes; fourth, that in case the
friends of the boy wish to have him from them, they may have a pretense for
keeping him, saying, give him time at least to learn grammar, which is the
foundation of every other knowledge; fifth, they want to keep boys at school
till the age of manhood, that they may engage for their order those who show
most talent or expect large inheritances; but when an individual neither
possesses talents nor has any expectations, they will not retain him."[5]
Sigismund III., in
whose reign the Jesuits had become firmly rooted in Poland, died in 1632, and
was succeeded by his eldest son Vladislav IV. Vladislav hated the disciples of
Loyola as much as his father had loved and courted them, and he strove to the
utmost of his power to counteract the evil effects of his father's partiality
for the order. He restrained the persecution by mob riots; he was able, in some
instances, to visit with punishment the ringleaders in the burning down of
Protestant churches and schools; but that spirit of intolerance and bigotry
which was now diffused throughout the nation, and in which, with few exceptions,
noble and peasant shared alike, he could not lay; and when he went to his grave,
those bitter hatreds and evil passions which had been engendered during his
father's long occupancy of the throne, and only slightly repressed during his
own short reign, broke out afresh in all their violence.
Vladislav was
succeeded by his brother John Casimir. Casimir was a member of the Society of
Jesus, and had attained the dignity of the Roman purple; but when his brother's
death opened his way to the throne, the Pope relieved him from his vows as a
Jesuit. The heart of the Jesuit remained within him, though his vow to the order
had been dissolved. Nevertheless, it is but justice to say that Casimir was less
bigoted, and less the tool of Rome, than his father Sigismund had been. Still it
was vain to hope that under such a monarch the prospects of the Protestants
would be materially improved, or the tide of Popish reaction stemmed. Scarcely
had this disciple of Loyola ascended the throne than those political tempests
began, which continued at short intervals to burst over Poland, till at length
the nation was destroyed. The first calamity that befell the unhappy country was
a terrible revolt of the Cossacks of the Ukraine. The insurgent Cossacks were
joined by crowds of peasants belonging to the Greek Church, whose passions had
been roused by a recent attempt of the Polish bishops to compel them to enter
the Communion of Rome. Poland now began to feel what it was to have her soul
chilled and her bonds loosened by the touch of the Jesuit. If the insurrection
did not end in the dethronement of the monarch, it was owing not to the valor of
his troops, or the patriotism of his nobles, but to the compassion or remorse of
the rebels, who stopped short in their victorious career when the king was in
their power, and the nation had been brought to the brink of ruin.
The
cloud which had threatened the kingdom with destruction rolled away to the
half-civilised regions whence it had so suddenly issued; but hardly was it gone
when it was again seen to gather, and to advance against the unhappy kingdom.
The perfidy of the Romish bishops had brought this second calamity upon Poland.
The Archbishop of Kioff, Metropolitan of the Greek Church of Poland, had acted
as mediator between the rebellious Cossacks and the king, and mainly through the
archbishop's friendly offices had that peace been effected, which rescued from
imminent peril the throne and life of Casimir. One of the conditions of the
Pacification was that the archbishop should have a seat in the Senate; but when
the day came, and the Eastern prelate entered the hall to take his place among
the senators, the Roman Catholic bishops rose in a body and left the
Senate-house, saying that they never would sit with a schismatic. The Archbishop
of Kioff had lifted Casimir's throne out of the dust, and now he had his
services repaid with insult.
The warlike Cossacks held themselves
affronted in the indignity done their spiritual chief; and hence the second
invasion of the kingdom. This time the insurgents were defeated, but that only
brought greater evils upon the country. The Cossacks threw themselves into the
arms of the Czar of Muscovy. He espoused their quarrel, feeling, doubtless, that
his honor also was involved in the disgrace put upon a high dignitary of his
Church, and he descended on Poland with an immense army. At the same time,
Charles Gustavus of Sweden, taking advantage of the discontent which prevailed
against the Polish monarch Casimir, entered the kingdom with a chosen body of
troops; and such were his own talents as a leader, and such the discipline and
valor of his army, that in a short time the principal part of Poland was in his
possession. Casimir had, meanwhile, sought refuge in Silesia. The crown was
offered to the valorous and magnanimous Charles Gustavus, the nobles only
craving that before assuming it he should permit a Diet to assemble and formally
vote it to him.
Had Gustavus ascended the throne of Poland, it is
probable that the Jesuits would have been driven out, that the Protestant spirit
would have been reinvigorated, and that Poland, built up into a powerful
kingdom, would have proved a protecting wall to the south and west of Europe
against the barbaric masses of the north; but this hope, with all that it
implied, was dispelled by the reply of Charles Gustavus. "It did not need," he
said, "that the Diet should elect him king, seeing he was aready master of the
country by his sword." The self-love of the Poles was wounded; the war was
renewed; and, after a great struggle, a peace was concluded in 1660, under the
joint mediation and guarantee of England, France, and Holland. John Casimir
returned to resume his reign over a country bleeding from the swords of two
armies. The Cossacks had exercised an indiscriminate vengeance: the Popish
cathedral and the Protestant church had alike been given to the flames, and
Protestants and Papists had been equal sufferers in the calamities of the
war.
The first act of the monarch, after his return, was to place his
kingdom under the special protection of the "Blessed Virgin." To make himself
and his dominions the more worthy of so august a suzerainty,. he registered on
the occasion two vows, both. well-pleasing, as he judged, to his celestial
patroness. Casimir promised in the first to redress the grievances of the lower
orders, and in the second to convert the heretics in other words, to persecute
the Protestants. The first vow it was not even attempted to fulfill. All the
efforts of the sovereign, therefore, were given to the second.
But the
shield of England and Holland was at that time extended over the Protestants of
Poland, who were still numerous, and had amongst them some influential families;
the monarch's efforts were, in consequence, restricted meanwhile to the
conversion of the Socinians, who were numerous in his kingdom. They were offered
the alternative of return to the Roman Church or exile. They seriously proposed
to meet the prelates of the Roman hierarchy in conference, and convince them
that there was no fundamental difference between their tenets and the dogmas of
the Roman Church.[6] The conference was
declined, and the Socinians, with great hardship and loss, were driven out of
the kingdom. But the persecution did not stop there. England, with Charles II.
on her throne, grew cold in the cause of the Polish Protestants. In the treaty
of the peace of 1660, the rights of all religious Confessions in Poland had been
secured; but. the guaranteeing Powers soon ceased to enforce the treaty, the
Polish Government paid but small respect to it, persecution in the form of mob
violence was still continued; and when the reign of John Casimir, which had been
fatal to the Protestants throughout, came to an end, it was found that their
ranks were broken up, that all the great families who had belonged to their
communion were extinct or had passed into the Church of Rome, that their
sanctuaries were mostly in ashes, their congregations all dispersed, and their
cause hopeless.[7]
There followed a
succession of reigns which only furnished evidence how weak the throne had
become, and how powerful the Jesuits and the Roman hierarchy had grown.
Religious equality was still the law of Poland, and each new sovereign swore, at
his coronation, to maintain the rights of the anti-Romanists, but the
transaction was deemed a mere fiction, and the king, however much disposed, had
not the power to filfil his oath. The Jesuits and the bishops were in this
matter above the law, and the sovereign's tribunals could not enforce their own
edicts. 'What the law called rights the clergy stigmatised as abuses, and
demanded that they should be abolished. In 1732 a law was passed excluding from
all public offices those who were not of the communion of the Church of Rome.[8]
The public service
was thus deprived of whatever activity and enlightenment of mind yet existed in
Poland. The country had no need of this additional stimulus: it was already
pursuing fast enough the road to ruin. For a century, one disaster after another
had devastated its soil and people. Its limits had been curtailed by the loss of
several provinces; its population had been diminished by the emigration of
thousands of Protestants; its resources had been drained by its efforts to quell
revolt within and ward off invasion from without; its intelligence had been
obscured, and well-nigh extinguished, by those who claimed the exclusive right
to instruct its youth; for in that land it was a greater misfortune to be
educated than to grow up untaught. Overspread by torpor, Poland gave no signs of
life save such as indicate paralysis. Placed under foreign tutelage, and sunk in
dependence and helplessness, if she was cared for by her powerful protectors, it
was as men care for a once noble palace which they have no thought of
rebuilding, but from whose fallen masses they hope to extract a column or a
topstone that may help to enlarge and embellish their own
dwelling.
Justice requires that we should state, before dismissing this
part of our subject, with its many solemn lessons, that though the fall of
Protestantism in Poland, and the consequent ruin of the Polish State, was mainly
the work of the Jesuits, other causes co-operated, though ill a less degree. The
Protestant body in Poland, from the first, was parted into three Confessions:
the Genevan in Lithuania, the Bohemian in Great Poland, and the Lutheran in
those towns that were inhabited by a population of German descent. This was a
source of weakness, and this weakness was aggravated by the ill-will borne by
the Lutheran Protestants to the adherents of the other two Confessions. The evil
was cured, it was thought, by the Union of Sandomir; but Lutheran exclusiveness
and intolerance, after a few years, again broke up the united Church, and
deprived the Protestant cause of the strength which a common center always
gives. The short lives of John Alasco and Prince Radziwill are also to be
reckoned among the causes which contributed to the failure of the Reform
movement in Poland. Had their labors been prolonged, a deeper seat would have
been given to Protestant truth in the general population, and the throne might
have been gained to the Reformation. The Christian chivalry and patriotism with
which the great nobles placed themselves at the head of the movement are worthy
of all praise, but the people must ever be the mainstay of a religious
Reformation, and the great landowners in Poland did not, we fear, take this fact
sufficiently into account, or bestow the requisite pains in imbuing their
tenantry with great Scriptural principles: and hence the comparative ease with
which the people were again transferred into the Roman fold. But an influence
yet more hostile to the triumph of Protestantism in Poland was the rise and
rapid diffusion of Socinian views. These sprang up in the bosom of the Genevan
Confession, and inflicted a blight on the powerful Protestant Churches of
Lithuania.
That blight very soon overspread the whole land; and the green
tree of Protestantism began to be touched with the sere of decay. The Socinian
was followed, as we have seen, by the Jesuit. A yet deeper desolation gathered
on his track. Decay became rottenness, and blight deepened into death; but
Protestantism did not perish alone. The throne, the country, the people, all
went down with it in a catastrophe so awful that no one could have effected it
but the Jesuit.
CHAPTER 7
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Top
BOHEMIA ENTRANCE OF
REFORMATION.
Darkness Concealing Bohemian Martyrs John Huss First
Preachers of the Reformed Doctrine in Bohemia False Brethren Zahera Passek
They Excite to Persecutions Martyrs-Nicolas Wrzetenarz-The Hostess Clara
Martha von Porzicz The Potter and Girdler Fate of the Persecutors
Ferdinand I. Invades Bohemia Persecutions and Emigrations Flight of the
Pastors John Augusta, etc. A Heroic Sufferer The Jesuits brought into
Bohemia Maximilian II. Persecution Stopped Bohemian Confession Rudolph
The Majestats-Brief Full Liberty given to the Protestants.
IN resuming the story of Bohemia we re-enter a tragic field. Our rehearsal of its conflicts and sufferings will in one sense be a sorrowful, in another a truly triumphant task. What we are about to witness is not the victorious march of a nation out of bondage, with banners unfurled, and singing the song of a recovered Gospel; on the contrary, it is a crowd of sufferers and martyrs that is to pass before us; and when the long procession begins to draw to an end, we shall have to confess that these are but a few of that great army of confessors who in this land gave their lives for the truth. Where are the rest, and why are not their deaths here recorded? They still abide under that darkness with which their martyrdoms were on purpose covered, and which as yet has been only partially dispelled. Their names and sufferings are the locked up in the imperial archives of Vienna, in the archiepiscopal archives of Prague, in the libraries of Leitmeritz, Koniggratz, Wittingau, and other places. For a full revelation we must wait the coming of that day when, in the emphatic language of Scripture,
In a former book [2] we brought down the
history of the Bohemian Church [3] a century beyond the stake
of Huss. Speaking from the midst of the flames, as we have already seen, the
martyr said, "A hundred years and there will arise a swan whose singing you
shall not be able to silence."[4] The century had revolved,
and Luther, with a voice that was rolling from east to west of Christendom, loud
as the thunder but melodious as the music of heaven, was preaching the doctrine
of justification by faith alone. We resume our history of the Bohemian Church at
the point where we broke it off.
Though fire and sword had been wasting
the Bohemian confessors during the greater part of the century, there were about
200 of their congregations in existence when the Reformation broke. Imperfect as
was their knowledge of Divine truth, their presence on the soil of Bohemia
helped powerfully toward the reception of the doctrines of Luther in that
country. Many hailed his appearance as sent to resume the work of their martyred
countryman, and recognised in his preaching the "song" for which Huss had bidden
them wait. As early as the year 1519, Matthias, a hermit, arriving at Prague,
preached to great crowds, which assembled round him in the streets and
market-place, though he mingled with the doctrines of the Reformation. certain
opinions of his own. The Calixtines, who were now Romanists in all save the
Eucharistic rite, which they received in both kinds, said, "It were better to
have our pastors ordained at Wittemberg than at Rome." Many Bohemian youths were
setting out to sit at Luther's feet, and those who were debarred the journey,
and could not benefit by the living voice of the great doctor, eagerly possessed
themselves, most commonly by way of Nuremberg, of his tracts and books; and
those accounted themselves happiest of all who could secure a Bible, for then
they could drink of the Water of Life at its fountainhead. In January, 1523, we
find the Estates of Bohemia and Moravia assembling at Prague, and having
summoned several orthodox pastors to assist at their deliberations, they
promulgated twenty articles "the forerunners of the Reformation," as Comenius
calls them of which the following was one: "If any man shall teach the Gospel
without the additions of men, he shall neither be reproved nor condemned for a
heretic."[5] Thus from the banks of the
Moldau was coming an echo to the voice at Wittemberg.
"False brethren"
were the first to raise the cry of heresy against John Huss, and also the most
zealous in dragging him to the stake. So was it again. A curate, newly returned
from Wittemberg, where he had daily taken his place in the crowd of students of
all nations who assembled around the chair of Luther, was the first in Prague to
call for the punishment of the disciples of that very doctrine which he
professed to have embraced. His name was Gallus Zahera, Calixtine pastor in the
Church of Laeta Curia, Old Prague. Zahera joined himself to John Passek,
Burgomaster of Prague, "a deceitful, cruel, and superstitious man," who headed a
powerful faction in the Council, which had for its object to crush the new
opinions. The Papal legate had just arrived in Bohemia, and he wrote in bland
terms to Zahera, holding out the prospect of a union between Rome and the
Calixtines. The Calixtine pastor, forgetting all he had learned at Wittemberg,
instantly replied that he had "no dearer wish than to be found constant in the
body of the Church by the unity of the faith;" and he went on to speak of
Bohemia in a style that must have done credit, in the eyes of the legate, at
once to his rhetoric and his orthodoxy.
"For truly," says he, "our
Bohemia, supporting itself on the most sure foundation of the most sure rock of
the Catholic faith, has sustained the fury and broken the force of all those
waves of error wherewith the neighboring countries of Germany have been shaken,
and as a beacon placed in the midst of a tempestuous sea, it has held forth a
dear light to every voyager, and shown him a safe harbor into which he may
retreat from shipwreck; " and he concluded by promising to send forthwith
deputies to expedite the business of a union between the Roman and Calixtine
Churches.[6] When asked how he could
thus oppose a faith he had lately so zealously professed, Zahera replied that he
had placed himself at the feet of Luther that he might be the better able to
confute him: "An excuse," observes Comerflus, "that might have become the mouth
of Judas."
Zahera and Passek were not the men to stop at half-measures.
To pave the way for a union with the Roman Church they framed a set of articles,
which, having obtained the consent of the king, they required the clergy and
citizens to subscribe. Those who refused were to be banished from Prague. Six
pastors declined the test, and were driven from the city. The pastors were
followed into exile by sixty-five of the leading citizens, including the
Chancellor of Prague and the former burgomaster. A pretext being sought for
severer measures, the malicious invention was spread abroad that the Lutherans
had conspired to massacre all the Calixtines, and three of the citizens were put
to the rack to extort from them a confession of a conspiracy which had never
existed. They bore the torment [7] rather than witness to a
falsehood. An agreement was next concluded by the influence of Zahera and
Passek, that no Lutheran should be taken into a workshop, or admitted to
citizenship. If one owed adebt, and was unwilling to pay it, he had only to say
the other was a Lutheran, and the banishment of the creditor gave him riddance
from his importunities.[8]
Branding on the
forehead, and other marks of ignominy, were now added to exile. One day Louis
Victor, a disciple of the Gospel, happened to be among the hearers of a certain
Barbarite who was entertaining his audience with ribald stories. At the close of
his sermon Louis addressed the monk, saying to him that it were "better to
instruct the people out of the Gospel than to detain them with such fables."
Straightway the preacher raised such a clamor that the excited crowd laid hold
on the too courageous Lutheran, and haled him to prison. Next day the city
sergeant conducted him out of Prague. A certain cutler, in whose possession a
little book on the Sacrament had been found, was scourged in the market-place.
The same punishment was inflicted upon John Kalentz, with the addition of being
branded on the forehead, because it was said that though a layman he had
administered the Eucharist to himself and his family. John Lapatsky, who had
returned from banishment, under the impression that the king had published an
amnesty to the exiles, was apprehended, thrown into prison, and murdered.[9]
The tragic fate of
Nicolas Wrzetenarz deserves a more circumstantial detail. Wrzetenarz was a
learned man, well stricken in years. He was accused of Picardism, a name by
which Protestant sentiments were at times designated. He was summoned to answer
before the Senate. When the old man appeared, Zahera, who presided on the
tribunal, asked him what he believed concerning the Sacrament of the altar. "I
believe," he replied, "what the Evangelists and St. Paul teach me to believe."
"Do you believe," asked the other, "that Christ is present in it, having flesh
and blood?" "I believe," replied Wrzetenarz, "that when a pious minister of
God's Word declares to a faithful congregation the benefits which are received
by the death of Christ, the bread and wine are made to them the Supper of the
Lord, wherein they are made partakers of the body and blood of Christ, and the
benefits received by his death." After a few more questions touching the mass,
praying to the saints, and similar matters, he was condemned as a heretic to the
fire. His hostess, Clara, a widow of threescore years, whom he had instructed in
the truth, and who refused to deny the faith she had received into her heart,
was condemned to be burned along with him.
They were led out to die.
Being come to the place of execution they were commanded to adore the sign of
the cross, which had been elevated in the east. They refused, saying, "The law
of God permits us not to worship the likeness of anything either in heaven or in
earth; we will worship only the living God, Lord of heaven and earth, who
inhabiteth alike the south, the west, the north, the east; " and turning their
backs upon the crucifix, and prostrating themselves toward the west, with their
eyes and hands lifted up to heaven, they invoked with great ardor the name of
Christ.
Having taken leave of their children, Nicolas, with great
cheerfulness, mounted the pile, and standing on the faggots, repeated the
Articles of the Creed, and having finished, looked up to heaven and prayed,
saying with a loud voice, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who was
born of a pure Virgin, and didst vouchsafe to undergo the shameful death of the
cross for me a vile sinner, thee alone do I worship to thee I commend my soul.
Be merciful unto me, and blot out all mine iniquities." He then repeated in
Latin the Psalm, "In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust."
Meanwhile the
executioner having brought forward Clara, and laid her on the pile, now tied
down both of them upon the wood, and heaping over them the books that had been
found in their house, he lighted the faggots, and soon the martyrs were
enveloped in the flames. So died this venerable scholar and aged matron at
Prague, on the 19th December, 1526. [10]
In the following
year Martha von Porzicz was burned. She was a woman heroic beyond even the
heroism of her sex. Interrogated by the doctors of the university as well as by
the councillors, she answered intrepidly, giving a reason of the faith she had
embraced, and upbraiding the Hussites themselves for their stupid adulation of
the Pope. The presiding judge hinted that it was time she was getting ready her
garment for the fire. "My petticoat and cloak are both ready," she replied; "you
may order me to be led away when you please."[11] She was straightway
sentenced to the fire.
The town-crier walked before her, proclaiming that
she was to die for blaspheming the holy Sacrament. Raising her voice to be heard
by the crowd she said, "It is not so; I am condemned because I will not confess
to please the priests that Christ, with his bones, hairs, sinews, and veins, is
contained in the Sacrament."[12] And raising her voice yet
higher, she warned the people not to believe the priests, who had abandoned
themselves to hypocrisy and every vice. Being come to the place where she was to
die, they importuned her to adore the crucifix. Turning her back upon it, and
elevating her eyes to heaven, "It is there," she said, "that our God dwells:
thither must we direct our looks." She now made haste to mount the pile, and
endured the torment of the flames with invincible courage. She was burned on the
4th of December, 1527.
On the 28th of August of the following year, two
German artificers one a potter, the other a girdler accused of Lutheranism
by the monks, were condemned by the judges of Prague to be burned. As they
walked to the stake, they talked so sweetly together, reciting passages from
Scripture, that tears flowed from the eyes of many of the spectators. Being come
to the pile, they bravely encouraged one another. "Since our Lord Jesus Christ,"
said the girdler, "hath for us suffered so grievous things, let us arm ourselves
to suffer this death, and let us rejoice that we have found so great favor with
him as to be accounted worthy to die for his Gospel;" to whom the potter made
answer, "I, truly, on my marriage-day was not so glad of heart as I am at this
moment." Having ascended the pyre, they prayed with a clear voice, "Lord Jesus,
who in thy sufferings didst pray for thine enemies, we also pray, forgive the
king, and the men of Prague, and the clergy, for they know not what they do, and
their hands are full of blood." And then addressing the people, they said,
"Dearly beloved, pray for your king, that God would give him the knowledge of
the truth, for he is misled by the bishops and clergy." "Having ended this most
penitent exhortation," says the chronicler, "they therewith ended their
lives."
After this the fury of the, persecution for a little while
subsided. The knot of cruel and bloodthirsty men who had urged it on was broken
up. One of the band fell into debt, and hanged himself in despair. Zahera was
caught in a political intrigue, into which his ambitious spirit had drawn him,
and, being banished, ended his life miserably in Franconia. The cruel
burgomaster, Passek, was about the same time sent into perpetual exile, after he
had in vain thrown himself at the king's feet for mercy. Ferdinand, who had now
ascended the throne, changed the Council of Prague, and gave the exiles liberty
to return. The year 1530 was to them a time of restitution; their churches
multiplied; they corresponded with their brethren in Germany and Switzerland,
and were thereby strengthened against those days of yet greater trial that
awaited them.[13]
These days came in
1547. Charles V., having overcome the German Protestants in the battle of
Muhlberg, sent his brother, Ferdinand I., with an army of Germans and Hungarians
to chastise the Bohemians for refusing to assist him in the war just ended.
Ferdinand entered Prague like a city taken by siege. The magistrates and chief
barons he imprisoned; some he beheaded, others he scourged and sent into exile,
while others, impelled by terror, fled from the city. "See," observed some,
"what calamities the Lutherans have brought upon us." The Bohemian Protestants
were accused of disloyalty, and Ferdinand, opening his ear to these malicious
charges, issued an order for the shutting up of all their churches. In the five
districts inhabited mainly by the "Brethren," all who refused to enter the
Church of Rome, or at least meet her more than half-way by joining the
Calixtines, were driven away, and their landlords, on various pretexts, were
arrested.
This calamity fell upon them like a thunder-bolt. Not a few,
yielding to the violence of the persecution, fell back into Rome; but the great
body, unalterably fixed on maintaining the faith for which Huss had died, chose
rather to leave the soil of Bohemia for ever than apostatise. In a previous
chapter we have recorded the march of these exiles, in three divisions, to their
new settlements in Prussia, and the halt they made on their journey at Posen,
where they kindled the light of truth in the midst of a population sunk ill
darkness, and laid the foundations of that prosperity which their Church at a
subsequent period enjoyed in Poland.
The untilled fields and empty
dwellings of the expatriated Bohemians awakened no doubts in the king's mind as
to the expediency of the course he was pursuing. Instead of pausing, there came
a third edict from Ferdinand, commanding the arrest and imprisonment of the
pastors. All except three saved themselves by a speedy flight. The greater part
escaped to Moravia; but many remained near the frontier, lying hid in woods and
caves, and venturing forth at night to visit their former flocks and to dispense
the Sacrament in private houses, and so to keep the sacred flame from going out
in Bohemia.
The three ministers who failed to make their escape were John
Augusta, James Bilke, and George Israel, all men of note. Augusta had learned
his theology at the feet of Luther. Courageous and eloquent, he was the terror
of the Calixtines, whom he had often vanquished in debate, and "they rejoiced,"
says Comenins, "when they learned his arrest, as the Philistines did when Samson
was delivered bound into their hands." He and his colleague Bilke were thrown
into a deep dungeon in the Castle of Prague, and, being accused of conspiring to
dispose Ferdinand, and place John, Elector of Saxony, on the throne of Bohemia,
they were put to the torture, but without eliciting anything which their
persecutors could construe into treason. Seventeen solitary and sorrowful years
passed over them in prison. Nor was it till the death of Ferdinand, in 1564,
opened their prison doors that they were restored to liberty. George Israel, by
a marvellous providence, escaped from the dungeon of the castle, and fleeing
into Prussia, he afterwards preached with great success the Gospel in Poland,
where he established not fewer than twenty churches.[14]
Many of the nobles
shared with the ministers in these sufferings. John Prostiborsky, a man of great
learning, beautiful life, and heroic spirit, was put to a cruel death. On the
rack he bit out his tongue and cast it at his tormentors, that he might not, as
he afterwards declared in writing, be led by the torture falsely to accuse
either himself or his brethren. He cited the king and his councillors to answer
for their tyranny at the tribunal of God. Ferdinand, desirous if possible to
save his life, sent him a physician; but he sank under his tortures, and died in
prison.[15]
Finding that, in
spite of the banishment of pastors, and the execution of nobles, Protestantism
was still extending, Ferdinand called the Jesuits to his aid. The first to
arrive was Wenzel Sturm, who had been trained by Ignatius Loyola himself. Sturm
was learned, courteous, adroit, and soon made himself popular in Prague, where
he labored, with a success equal to his zeal, to revive the decaying cause of
Rome. He was soon joined by a yet more celebrated member of the order, Canisius,
and a large and sumptuous edifice having been assigned them as a college, they
began to train priests who might be able to take their place in the pulpit as
well as at the altar; "for at that time," says Pessina, a Romish writer, "there
were so few orthodox priests that, had it not been for the Jesuits, the Catholic
religion would have been suppressed in Bohemia."[16] The Jesuits grew powerful
in Prague. They eschewed public disputations; they affected great zeal. for the
instruction of youth in the sciences; and their fame for learning drew crowds of
pupils around them. When they had filled all their existing schools, they
erected others; and thus their seminaries rapidly multiplied, "so that the
Catholic verity," in the words of the author last quoted, "which in Bohemia was
on the point of breathing its last, appeared to revive again, and rise
publicly."
Toward the close of his reign, Ferdinand became somewhat less
zealous in the cause of Rome. Having succeeded to the imperial crown on the
abdication of his brother, Charles V., he had wider interests to care for, and
less time, as well as less inclination, to concentrate his attention on Bohemia.
It is even said that before his death he expressed his sincere regret for his
acts of oppression against his Bohemian subjects; and to do the monarch justice,
these severities were the outcome, not of a naturally cruel disposition, but
rather of his Spanish education, which had been conducted under the
superintendence of the stern Cardinal Ximenes.[17]
Under his son and
successor, Maximilian II., the sword of persecution was sheathed. This prince
had for his instructor John Fauser, a man of decided piety, and a lover of the
Protestant doctrine, the principles of which he took care to instil into the
mind of his royal pupil. For this Fauser had nearly paid the penalty of his
life. One day Ferdinand, in a fit of rage, burst into his chamber, and seizing
him by the throat, and putting a drawn sword to his breast, upbraided him for
seducing his son from the true faith.
The king forbore, however, from
murdering him, and was content with commanding his son no further to receive his
instructions. Maximilian was equally fortunate in his physician, Crato. He also
loved the Gospel, and, enjoying the friendship of the monarch, he was able at
times to do service to the "Brethren." Under this gentle and upright prince the
Bohemian Protestants were accorded full liberty, and their Churches flourished.
The historian Thaunus relates a striking incident that occurred in the third
year of his reign. The enemies of the Bohemians, having concocted a new plot,
sent the Chancellor of Bohemia, Joachim Neuhaus, to Vienna, to persuade the
emperor to renew the old edicts against the Protestants. The artful insinuations
of the chancellor prevailed over the easy temper of the monarch, and Maximilian,
although with great distress of mind, put his hand to the hostile mandate.
"But," says the old chronicler, "God had a watchful eye over his own, and would
not permit so good and innocent a prince to have a hand in blood, or be burdened
with the cries of the oppressed."[18] Joachim, overjoyed, set
out on his journey homeward, the fatal missives that were to lay waste the
Bohemian Church carefully deposited in his chest. He was crossing the bridge of
the Danube when the oxen broke loose from his carriage, and the bridge breaking
at the same instant, the chancellor and his suite were precipitated into the
river. Six knights struck out and swam ashore; the rest of the attendants were
drowned. The chancellor was seized hold of by his gold chain as he was floating
on the current of the Danube, and was kept partially above water till some
fishermen, who were near the scene of the accident, had time to come to the
rescue. He was drawn from the water into their boat, but found to be dead. The
box containing the letters patent sank in the deep floods of the Danube, and was
never seen more nor, indeed, was it ever sought for. Thaunus says that this
catastrophe happened on the fourth of the Ides of December, 1565.
In
Maximilian's reign, a measure was passed that helped to consolidate the
Protestantism of Bohemia. In 1575, the king assembled a Parliament at Prague,
which enacted that all the Churches in the kingdom which received the Sacrament
under both kinds that is, the Utraquists or Calixtines, the Bohemian Brethren,
the Lutherans, and the Calvinists or Picardines were at liberty to draw up a
common Confession of their faith, and unite into one Church. In spite of the
efforts of the Jesuits, the leading pastors of the four communions consulted
together and, animated by a spirit of moderation and wisdom, they compiled a
common creed, in the Bohemian language, which, although never rendered into
Latin, nor printed till 1619, and therefore not to be found in the "Harmony of
Confessions," was ratified by the king, who promised his protection to the
subscribers, had this Confession been universally signed, it would have been a
bulwark of strength to the Bohemian Protestants.[19]
The reign of the
Emperor Maximilian came all too soon to an end. He died in 1576, leaving a name
dear to the Protestants and venerated by all parties.
Entirely different
in disposition and character was his son, the Emperor Rudolph II., by whom he
was succeeded. Educated at the court of his cousin Philip II., Rudolph brought
back to his native dominions the gloomy superstitions and the tyrannical maxims
that prevailed in the Escorial. Nevertheless, the Bohemian Churches were left in
peace. Their sleepless foes were ever and anon intriguing to procure some new
and hostile edict from the king; but Rudolph was too much engrossed in the study
of astrology and alchemy to pursue steadily any one line of policy, and so these
edicts slept. His brother Matthias was threatening his throne; this made it
necessary to conciliate all classes of his subjects; hence originated the famous
Majestats-Brief, one object of which was to empower the Protestants in Bohemia
to open churches and schools wherever they pleased. This "Royal Charter,"
moreover, made over to them [20] the University of Prague,
and permitted them to appoint a public administrator of their affairs. It was in
virtue of this last very important concession that the Protestant Church of
Bohemia now attained more nearly than ever, before or since, to a perfect union
and a settled government.
CHAPTER 8
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OVERTHROW OF PROTESTANTISM IN
BOHEMIA.
Protestantism Flourishes Constitution of Bohemian. Church
Its Government Concord between Romanists and Protestants Temple of Janus
Shut Joy of Bohemia Matthias Emperor Election of Ferdinand II. as King of
Bohemia Reaction Intrigues and Insults Council-chamber Three Councillors
Thrown out at the Window Ferdinand II. elected Emperor War Battle of the
White Hill Defeat of the Protestants Atrocities Amnesty Apprehension of
Nobles and Senators Their Frightful Sentences -Their Behaviour on the Scaffold
Their Deaths.
The Protestant Church of Bohemia, now in her most
flourishing condition, deserves some attention. That Church was composed of the
three following bodies: the Calixtines, the United Brethren, and the Protestants
that is, the Lutheran and Calvinist communions. These three formed one Church
under the Bohemian Confession to which reference has been made in the previous
chapter. A Consistory, or Table of Government, was constituted, consisting of
twelve ministers chosen in the following manner: three were selected from the
Calixtines, three from the United Brethren, and three from the Lutheran and
Calvinistic communions, to whom were added three professors from the univensity.
These twelve men were to manage the affairs of their Church in all Bohemia. The
Consistory thus constituted was entirely independent of the archiepiscopal chair
in Prague.
It was even provided in the Royal Charter that the Consistory
should "direct, constitute, or reform anything among their Churches without
hindrance or interference of his Imperial Majesty." In case they were unable to
determine any matter among themselves, they were at liberty to advise with his
Majesty's councillors of state, and with the judges, or with the Diet, the
Protestant members of which were exclusively to have the power of deliberating
on and determining the matter so referred, "without hindrance, either from their
Majesties the future Kings of Bohemia, or the party sub una " that is, the
Romanist members of the Diet.[1]
From among these
twelve ministers, one was to be chosen to fill the office of administrator. He
was chief in the Consistory, and the rest sat with him as assessors. The duty of
this body was to determine in all matters appertaining to the doctrine and
worship of the Church the dispensation of Sacraments, the ordination of
ministers, the inspection of the clergy, the administration of discipline, to
which was added the care of widows and orphans. There was, moreover, a body of
laymen, termed Defenders, who were charged with the financial and secular
affairs of the Church.
Still further to strengthen the Protestant Church
of Bohemia, and to secure the peace of the kingdom, a treaty was concluded
between the Romanists and Protestants, in which these two parties bound
themselves to mutual concord, and agreed to certain rules which were to regulate
their relations to one another as regarded the possession of churches, the right
of burial in the public cemeteries, and similar matters. This agreement was
entered upon the registers of the kingdom; it was sworn to by the Emperor
Rudolph and his councillors; it was laid up among the other solemn charters of
the nation, and a protest taken that if hereafter any one should attempt to
disturb this arrangement, or abridge the liberty conceded in it, he should be
held to be a disturber of the peace of the kingdom, and punished accordingly.[2]
Thus did the whole
nation unite in closing the doors of the Temple of Janus, in token that now
there was peace throughout the whole realm of Bohemia. Another most significant
and fitting act signalized this happy time. The Bethlehem Chapel-the scene of
the ministry of John Huss the spot where that day had dawned which seemed now
to have reached its noon was handed over to the Protestants as a public
recognition that they were the true offspring of the great Reformer and martyr.
Bohemia may be said to be now Protestant. "Religion flourished throughout the
whole kingdom," says Comenius, "so that there was scarcely one among a hundred
who did not profess the Reformed doctrine." The land was glad; and the people's
joy found vent in such unsophisticated couplets as the following, which might be
read upon the doors of the churches:
But even in the hour of triumph there were some who
felt anxiety for the future. They already saw ominous symptoms that the
tranquillity would not be lasting. The great security which the Church now
enjoyed had brought with it a relaxation of morals, and a decay of piety.
"Alas!" said the more thoughtful, "we shall yet feel the mailed hand of some
Ferdinand." It was a true presage; the little cloud was even now appearing on
the horizon that was rapidly to blacken into the tempest.
The Archduke
Matthias renewed his claims upon the crown of Bohemia, and supporting them by
arms, he ultimately deposed his brother Rudolph, and seated himself upon his
throne. Matthias was old and had no son, and he bethought him of adopting his
cousin Ferdinand, Duke or Styria, who had been educated in a bigoted attachment
to the Roman faith. Him Matthias persuaded the Bohemians to crown as their king.
They knew something of the man whom they were calling to reign over them, but
they relied on the feeble security of his promise not to interfere in religious
matters while Matthias lived. It soon became apparent that Ferdinand had sworn
to the Bohemians with the mouth, and to the Pope with the heart. Their old
enemies no longer hung their heads, but began to walk about with front erect,
and eyes that presaged victory. The principal measures brought to bear against
the Protestants were the work of the college of the Jesuits and the cathedral.
The partisans of Ferdinand openly declared that the Royal Charter, having been
extorted from the monarch, was null and void; that although Matthias was too
weak to tear in pieces that rag of old parchment, the pious Ferdinand would make
short work with this bond.
By little and little the persecution was
initiated. The Protestants were forbidden to print a single line except with the
approbation of the chancellor, while their opponents were circulating without
let or hindrance, far and near, pamphlets filled with the most slanderous
accusations. The pastors were asked to produce the original titles of the
churches in their possession; in short, the device painted upon the triumphal
arch, which the Jesuits had erected at Olmutz in honor of Ferdinand - namely,
the Bohemian lion and the Moravian eagle chained to Austria, and underneath a
sleeping hare with open eyes, and the words "I am used to it"[4] expressed the consummate
craft with which the Jesuits had worked, and the criminal drowsiness into which
the Bohemians had permitted themselves to fall.[5]
No method was left
unattempted against the Protestants. It was sought by secret intrigue to invade
their rights, and by open injury to sting them into insurrection. At last, in
1618, they rushed to arms. A few of the principal barons having met to consult
on the steps to be taken in this crisis of their affairs, a sudden mandate
arrived forbidding their meeting under pain of death. This flagrant violation of
the Royal Charter, following on the destruction of several of their churches,
irritated the Reformed party beyond endurance. Their anger was still more
inflamed by the reflection that these bolts came not from Vienna, but from the
Castle of Prague, where they had been forged by the junto whose head-quarters
were at the Hardschin. Assembling an armed force the Protestants crossed the
Moldau, climbed the narrow street, and presented themselves before the Palace of
Hardschin, that crowns the height on which New Prague is built. They marched
right into the council-chamber, and seizing on Slarata, Martinitz, and Secretary
Fabricius, whom they believed to be the chief authors of their troubles, they
threw them headlong out of the window. Falling on a heap of soft earth,
sprinkled over with torn papers, the councilors sustained no harm. "They have
been saved by miracle," said their friends. "No," replied the Protestants, "they
have been spared to be a scourge to Bohemia." Tiffs deed was followed by one
less violent, but more wise - the expulsion of the Jesuits, who were forbidden
under pain of death to return.[6]
The issue was war;
but the death of Matthias, which happened at this moment, delayed for a little
while its outbreak. The Bohemian States met to deliberate whether they should
continue to own Ferdinand after his flagrant violation of the Majestats-Brief.
They voted him no longer their sovereign. The imperial electors were then
sitting at Frankfort-on-the-Maine to choose a new emperor. The Bohemians sent an
ambassador thither to say that they had deposed Ferdinand, and to beg the
electors not to recognize him as King of Bohemia by admitting him to a seat in
the electoral college. Not only did the electors admit Ferdinand as still
sovereign of Bohemia, but they conferred upon him the vacant diadem.
The
Bohemians saw that they were in an evil case. The bigoted Ferdinand, whom they
had made more their enemy than ever by repudiating him as their king, was now
the head of the "Holy Roman Empire."
The Bohemians had gone too far to
retreat. They could not prevent the electors conferring the imperial diadem upon
Ferdinand, but they were resolved that he should never wear the crown of
Bohemia. They chose Frederick, Elector-Palatine, as their sovereign. He was a
Calvinist, son-in-law of James I. of England; and five days after his arrival in
Prague, he and his consort were crowned with very great pomp, and took
possession of the palace.
Scarcely had the bells ceased to ring, and the
cannon to thunder, by which the coronation was celebrated, when the nation and
the new monarch were called to look in the face the awful struggle they had
invited. Ferdinand, raising a mighty army, was already on his march to chastise
Bohemia. On the road to Prague he took several towns inhabited by Protestants,
and put the citizens to the sword. Advancing to the capital he encamped on the
White Hill, and there a decisive battle was fought on the 8th of November, 1620.
[7] The Protestant army was
completely beaten; the king, whom the unwelcome tidings interrupted at his
dinner, fled; and Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia lay prostrated at the feet of
the conqueror. The generals of Ferdinand entered Prague, "the conqueror
promising to keep articles," says the chronicler, "but afterwards performing
them according to the manner of the Council at Constance."
The ravages
committed by the soldiery were most frightful. Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia
were devastated. Villages were set on fire, cities were pillaged, churches,
schools, and dwellings pulled down; the inhabitants were slaughtered, matrons
and maidens violated; neither the child in its cradle nor the corpse in its
grave was spared. Prague was given as a spoil, and the soldiers boasted that
they had gathered some millions from the Protestants; nor, large as the sum is,
is it an unlikely one, seeing that all the valuables in the country had been
collected for security into the capital.
But by far the most melancholy
result of this battle was the overthrow, as sudden as it was complete, of the
Protestantism of Bohemia. The position of the two parties was after this
completely reversed; the Romanists were now the masters; and the decree went
forth to blot out utterly Protestant Bohemia. Not by the sword, the halter, and
the wheel in the first instance. The Jesuits were recalled, and the work was
committed to them, and so skillfully did they conduct it that Bohemia, which had
been almost entirely Protestant when Ferdinand II ascended the throne, was at
the close of his reign almost as entirely Popish. No nation, perhaps, ever
underwent so great a change in the short term of fifteen years as
Bohemia.
Instead of setting up the scaffold at once, the conquerors
published an amnesty to all who should lay down their arms. The proclamation was
as welcome as it was unexpected, and many were caught, who otherwise would have
saved their lives by flight. Some came out of their hiding places in the
neighborhood, and some returned from distant countries. For three months the
talk was only of peace. It was the sweet piping of the fowler till the birds
were snared. At length came the doleful 20th of February, 1621.
On that
evening fifty chiefs of the Bohemian nation were seized and thrown into prison.
The capture was made at the supper-hour. The time was chosen as the likeliest
for finding every one at home. The city captains entered the house, a wagon
waited at the door, and the prisoners were ordered to enter it, and were driven
off to the Tower of Prague, or the prisons of the magistrate. The thing was done
stealthily and swiftly; the silence of the night was not broken, and Prague knew
not the blow that had fallen upon it.
The men now swept off to prison
were the persons of deepest piety and highest intelligence in the land. In
short, they were the flower of the Bohemian nation.[8] They had passed their
youth in the study of useful arts, or in the practice of arms, or in foreign
travel. Their manhood had been devoted to the service of their country. They had
been councilors of state, ambassadors, judges, or professors in the university.
It was the wisdom, the experience, and the courage which they had brought to the
defense of their nation's liberty, and the promotion of its Reformation,
especially in the recent times of trouble, which had drawn upon them the
displeasure of the emperor. The majority were nobles and barons, and all of them
were venerable by age.
On the Clay after the transaction we have
recorded, writs were issued summoning all now absent from the kingdom to appear
within six weeks. When the period expired they were again summoned by a herald,
but no one appearing, they were proclaimed traitors, and their heads were
declared forfeit to the law, and their estates to the king. Their execution was
gone through in their absence by the nailing of their names to the gallows. On
the day following sentence was passed on the heirs of all who had fallen in the
insurrection, and their properties passed over to the royal exchequer.[9]
In prison the
patriots were strenuously urged to beg pardon and sue for life. But, conscious
of no crime, they refused to compromise the glory of their cause by doing
anything that might be construed into a confession of guilt. Despairing of their
submission, their enemies proceeded with their trial in May. Count Schlik, while
undergoing his examination, became wearied out with the importunities of his
judges and inquisitors, who tried to make hint confess what had never existed.
He tore open. his vest, and laying bare his breast, exclaimed, "Tear this body
in pieces, and examine my heart; nothing shall you find but what we have already
declared in our Apology. The love of liberty and religion alone constrained us
to draw the sword; but seeing God has permitted the emperor's sword to conquer,
and has delivered us into your hands, His will be done." Budowa and Otto Losz,
two of his co-patriots, expressed themselves to the same effect, adding, "Defeat
has made our cause none the worse, and victory has made yours none the
better."[10]
On Saturday, the
19th of June, the judges assembled in the Palace of Hardschin, and the
prisoners, brought before them one by one, heard each his sentence. The majority
were doomed to die, some were consigned to perpetual imprisonment, and others
were sent into exile. Ferdinand, that he might have an opportunity of appearing
more clement and gracious than his judges, ordered the sentences to be sent to
Vienna, where some of them were mitigated in their details by the royal pen. We
take an instance: Joachim Andreas Schlik, whose courageous reply to his
examiners we have already quoted, was to have had his hand cut off, then to have
been beheaded and quartered, and his limbs exposed on a stake at a cross-road;
but this sentence was changed by Ferdinand to beheading, and the affixing of his
head and hand to the tower of the Bridge of Prague. The sentences of nearly all
the rest were similarly dealt with by the merciful monarch.
The condemned
were told that they were to die within two days, that is, on the 21st of June.
This intimation was made to them that they might have a Jesuit, or a Capuchin,
or a clergyman of the Augsburg Confession, to prepare them for death. They were
now led back to prison: the noblemen were conducted to the Castle of Prague, and
the citizens to the prisons of the printer. Some "fellows of the baser sort,"
suborned for the purpose, insulted them as they were being led through the
streets, crying out, "Why don't you now sing, 'The Lord reigneth'?" The
ninety-ninth Psalm was a favorite ode of the Bohemians, wherewith they had been
wont to kindle their devotion in the sanctuary, and their courage on the
battlefield.
Scarcely had they reentered their prisons when a flock [11] of Jesuits and Capuchin
monks, not waiting till they were called, gathered round them, and began to
earnestly beseech them to change their religion, holding out the hope that even
yet their lives might be spared. Not wishing that hours so precious as the few
that now remained to them should be wasted, they gave the intruders plainly to
understand that they were but losing their pains, whereupon the good Fathers
withdrew, loudly bewailing their obstinacy, and calling heaven and earth to
witness that they were guiltless of the blood of men who had put away from them
the grace of God. The Protestant ministers were next introduced. The barons and
nobles in the tower were attended by the minister of St. Nicholas, Rosacius by
name. The citizens in the prisons of Old Prague were waited on by Werbenius and
Jakessius, and those in New Prague by Clement and Hertwiz. The whole time till
the hour of execution was spent in religious exercises, in sweet converse, in
earnest prayers, and in the singing of psalms. "Lastly," says the chronicler of
the persecutions of the Bohemian Church, "they did prepare the holy martyrs by
the administration of the Lord's Supper for the future agony."
On the
evening of Sunday, as the prisoners shut up in Old Prague were conversing with
their pastor Werbenius, the chief gaoler entered and announced the hour of
supper. They looked at each other, and all declared that they desired to eat no
more on earth. Nevertheless, that their bodies might not be faint when they
should be led out to execution, they agreed to sit down at table and partake of
something. One laid the cloth, another the plates, a third brought water to
wash, a fourth said grace, and a fifth observed that this was their last meal on
earth, and that tomorrow they should sit down and sup with Christ in heaven. The
remark was overheard by the Prefect of Old Prague. On going out to his friends
he observed jeeringly, "What think ye? These men believe that Christ keeps cooks
to regale them in heaven!" On these words being told to Jakessius, the minister,
he replied that "Jesus too had a troublesome spectator at his last supper, Judas
Iscariot."
Meanwhile they were told that the barons and noblemen were
passing from the tower to the courthouse, near to the market-place, where the
scaffold on which they were to die had already been erected. They hastened to
the windows, and began to sing in a loud voice the forty-fourth Psalm to cheer
their fellow-martyrs: "Yea, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; ...
Rise, Lord, cast us not off for ever." A great crowd, struck with consternation
at seeing their greatest and most venerated men led to death, followed them with
sighs and tears.
This night was spent as the preceding one had been, in
prayers and psalms. They exhorted one another to be of good courage, saying that
as the glory of going first in the path of martyrdom had been awarded them, it
behooved them to leave an example of constancy to their posterity, and of
courage to the world, by showing it that they did not fear to die. They then
joined in singing the eighty-sixth Psalm. When it was ended, John Kutnauer
turned the last stanza into a prayer, earnestly beseeching God that he would
"show some token which might at once strengthen them and convince their
enemies." Then turning to his companions, and speaking to them with great fervor
of spirit, he said, "Be of good cheer, for God hath heard us even in this, and
tomorrow he will bear witness by some visible sign that we are the martyrs of
righteousness." But Pastor Werbenius, when he heard this protestation, bade them
be content to have as sufficient token from God, even this, "that that death
which was bitter to the world he made sweet to them."
When the day had
broken they washed and changed their clothes, putting on clean apparel as if
they were going to a wedding, and so fitting their doublets, and even their
frills, that they might not need to re-arrange their dress on the scaffold. All
the while John Kutnauer was praying fervently that some token might be
vouchsafed them as a testimony of their innocence. In a little the sun rose, and
the broad stream of the Moldau, as it rolled between the two Pragues, and the
roofs and steeples on either side, began to glow in the light. But soon all eyes
were turned upwards. A bow of dazzling brilliance was seen spanning the
heavens.[12] There was not a cloud in
the sky, no rain had fallen for two days, yet there was this bow of marvelous
brightness hung in the clear air. The soldiers and townspeople rushed into the
street to gaze at the strange phenomenon. The martyrs, who beheld it from their
windows, called to mind the bow which greeted the eyes of Noah when he came
forth from the Ark. It was the ancient token of a faithfulness more steadfast
than the pillars of earth;[13] and their feelings in
witnessing it were doubtless akin to those with which the second great father of
the human family beheld it for the first time in the young skies of the
post-diluvian world.
The bow soon ceased to be seen, and the loud
discharge of a cannon told them that the hour of execution hail arrived. The
martyrs arose, and embracing, they bade each other be of good cheer, as did also
the ministers present, who exhorted them not to faint now when about to receive
the crown. The scaffold had been erected hard by in the great square or
market-place, and several squadrons of cavalry and some companies of foot were
now seen taking up their position around it. The imperial judges and senators
next came forward and took their seats on a theater, whence riley could command
a full view of the scaffold. Under a canopy of state sat Lichtenstein, the
Governor of Prague. "Vast numbers of spectators," says Comenius, "crowded the
market-place, the streets, and all the houses."
The martyrs were called
to go forth and die one after the other. When one had offered his life the city
officers returned and summoned the next. As if called to a banquet they rose
with alacrity, and with faces on which shone a serene cheerfulness they walked
to the bloody stage. All of them submitted with undaunted courage to the stroke
of the headsman. Rosacius, who was with them all the while, noted down their
words, and he tells us that when one was called to go to the scaffold he would
address the rest as follows: "Most beloved friends, farewell. God give you the
comfort of his Spirit, patience, and courage, that what before you confessed
with the heart, the mouth, and the hand, you may now seal by your glorious
death. Behold I go before you, that I may see the glory of my Lord Jesus Christ!
You will follow, that we may together behold the face of our Father. This hour
ends our sorrow, and begins our everlasting joy." To whom those who remained
behind would make answer and say, "May God, to whom you go, prosper your
journey, and grant you a happy passage from this vale of misery into the
heavenly country. May the Lord Jesus send his angels to meet thee. Go, brother,
before us to our Father's house; we follow thee. Presently we shall reassemble
in that heavenly glory of which we are confident through him in whom we have
believed."[14]
The beaming faces
and meek yet courageous utterances of these men on the scaffold, exhibited to
the spectators a more certain token of the goodness of their cause than the bow
which had attracted their wondering gaze in the morning. Many of the senators,
as well as the soldiers who guarded the execution, were moved to tears; nor
could the crowd have withheld the same tribute, had not the incessant beating of
drums, and the loud blaring of trumpets, drowned the words spoken on the
scaffold.
But these words were noted down by their pastors, who
accompanied them to the block, and as the heroism of the scaffold is a spectacle
more sublime, and one that will better repay an attentive study, than the
heroism of the battlefield, we shall permit these martyr-patriots to pass before
us one by one. The clamor that drowned their dying words has long since been
hushed; and the voices of the scaffold of Prague, rising clear and loud above
the momentary noise, have traveled down the years to us.
CHAPTER 9
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AN ARMY OF MARTYRS.
Count
Schlik His Cruel Sentence The Baron of Budowa His Last Hours Argues with
the Jesuits His Execution Christopher Harant His Travels His Death
Baron Kaplirz His Dream Attires himself for the Scaffold Procopius
Dworschezky His Martyrdom Otto Losz His Sleep and Execution Dionysius
Czernin His Behaviour on the Scaffold Kochan Steffek Jessenius His
Learning His Interview with the Jesuits Cruel Death Khobr Schulz
Kutnauer His great Courage His Death Talents and Rank of these Martyrs
Their Execution the Obsequies of their Country.
JOACHIM ANDREAS SCHLIK, Count of Passau, and chief
justice under Frederick, comes first in the glorious host that is to march past
us. He was descended of an ancient and illustrious family. A man of magnanimous
spirit, and excellent piety, he united an admirable modesty with great business
capacity. When he heard his sentence, giving his body to be quartered, and his
limbs to be exposed at a cross-road, he said, "The loss of a sepulchre is a
small matter." On hearing the gun in the morning fired to announce the
executions, "This," said he, "is the signal; let me go first."
He walked
to the scaffold, dressed in a robe of black silk, holding a prayer-book in his
hands, and attended by four German clergymen.[1] He mounted the scaffold,
and then marking the great brightness of the sun, he broke out, "Christ, thou
Sun of righteousness, grant that through the darkness of death I may pass into
the eternal light." He paced to and fro a little while upon the scaffold,
evidently meditating, but with a serene and dignified countenance, so that the
judges could scarce refrain from weeping. Having prayed, his page assisted him
to undress, and then he kneeled down on a black cloth laid there for the
purpose, and which was removed after each execution, that the next to die might
not see the blood of the victim who had preceded him. While engaged in silent
prayer, the executioner struck, and the head of Bohemia's greatest son rolled on
the scaffold. His right hand was then struck off and, together with his head,
'was fixed on a spear, and set up on the tower of the Bridge of Prague. His
body, untouched by the executioner, was wrapped in a cloth, and carried from the
scaffold by four men in black masks.
Scarcely inferior in weight of
character, and superior in the variety of his mental accomplishments to Count
Schlik, was the second who was called to die Wenceslaus, Baron of Budown. He
was a man of incomparable talents and great learning, which he had further
improved by travelling through all the kingdoms of Western and Southern Europe.
He had filled the highest offices of the State under several monarchs.
Protestant writers speak of him as "the glory of his country, and the bright
shining star of the Church, and as rather the father than the lord of his
dependents." The Romanist historian, Pelzel, equally extols his uprightness of
character and his renown in learning. When urged in prison to beg the clemency
of Ferdinand, he replied, "I will rather die than see the ruin of my
country."
When one told him that it was rumored of him that he had died
of grief, he exclaimed, "Died of grief ! I never experienced such happiness as
now. See here," said he, pointing to his Bible, "this is my paradise; never did
it regale me with such store of delicious fruits as now. Here I daily stray,
eating the manna of heaven, and drinking the water of life." On the third day
before receiving his sentence he dreamed that he was walking in a pleasant
meadow, and musing on the issue that might be awaiting his affairs, when lo! one
came to him, and gave him a book, which when he had opened, he found the leaves
were of silk, white as snow, with nothing written upon them save the fifth verse
of the thirty-seventh Psalm:
"Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in
him; and he shall bring it to pass." While he was pondering over these words
there came yet another, carrying a white robe, which he cast over him. When he
awoke in the morning he told his dream to his servant. Some days after, when he
mounted the scaffold, "Now," said he, "I attire myself in the white robe of my
Savior's righteousness."
Early on the morning of his execution there came
two Jesuits to him, who, complimenting him on his great learning, said that they
desired to do him a work of mercy by gaining his soul. "Would," he said, "you
were as sure of your salvation as I am of mine, through the blood of the Lamb."
"Good, my lord," said they, "but do not presume too much; for doth not the
Scripture say, 'No man knoweth whether he deserves grace or
wrath'?"
"Where find you that written?" he asked; "here is the Bible,
show me the words." "If I be not deceived," said one of them, "in the Epistle of
Paul to Timothy." "You would teach me the way of salvation," said the baron
somewhat angrily, "thou who knowest thy Bible so in. But that the believer may
be sure of his salvation is proved by the words of St. Paul, 'I know whom I have
believed,' and also, 'there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.'" "But,"
rejoined the Jesuit, "Paul says this of himself, not of others." "Thou art
mistaken," said Budowa, "for it continues, 'not for me only, but for all them
who love his appearing.' Depart, and leave me in peace."
He ascended the
scaffold with undaunted look, and stroking his long white beard for he was a
man of seventy he said, "Behold! my gray hairs, what honor awaits you; this
day you shall be crowned with martyrdom." After this he directed his speech to
God, praying for the Church, for his country, for his enemies, and having
commended his soul to Christ he yielded his head to the executioner's sword.
That head was exposed by the side of that of his fellow patriot and martyr,
Schlik, on the tower of the Bridge of Prague.
The third who was called to
ascend the scaffold was Christopher Harant, descended from the ancient and noble
family of the Harants of Polzicz and Bezdruzicz. He had traveled in Europe,
Asia, and Africa, visiting Jerusalem and Egypt, and publishing in his native
tongue his travels in these various lands. He cultivated the sciences, wrote
Greek and Latin verses, and had filled high office under several emperors.
Neither his many accomplishments nor his great services could redeem his life
from the block. When called to die he said, "I have traveled in many countries,
and among many barbarous nations, I have undergone dangers manifold by land and
sea, and now I suffer, though innocent, in my own country, and by the hands of
those for whose good both my ancestors and myself have spent our fortunes and
our lives. Father, forgive them." When he went forth, he prayed, "In thee, O
Lord, have I put my trust; let me not be confounded."
When he stepped
upon the scaffold he lifted up his eyes, and said, "Into thy hands, O Lord, I
commend my spirit." Taking off his doublet, he stepped upon the fatal doth, and
kneeling down, again prayed. The executioner from some cause delaying to strike,
he again broke out into supplication, "Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon
me, and receive my spirit." The sword now fell, and his prayer and life ended
together.[2]
The fourth to offer
up his life was Gaspar, Baron Kaplirz of Sulowitz, a knight of eighty-six years
of age. He had faithfully served four emperors. Before going to the scaffold he
called for Rosacius, and said, "How often have I entreated that God would be
pleased to take me out of this life, but instead of granting my wish, he has
reserved me as a sacrifice for himself. Let God's will be done." "Yesterday,"
said he, continuing his speech, "I was told that if I would petition Prince
Lichtenstein for pardon my life would be spared. I never offended the prince: I
will desire pardon of Him against whom I have committed many sins. I have lived
long enough. When I cannot distinguish the taste of meats, or relish the
sweetness of drinks; when it is tedious to sit long, and irksome to lie; when I
cannot walk unless I lean on a staff, or be assisted by others, what profit
would such a life be to me? God forbid that I should be pulled from this holy
company of martyrs."
On the day of execution, when the minister who was
to attend him to the scaffold came to him, he said, "I laid this miserable body
on a bed, but what sleep could so old a man have? Yet I did sleep, and saw two
angels coming to me, who wiped my face with fine linen, and bade me make ready
to go along with them. But I trust in my God that I have these angels present
with me, not by a dream, but in truth, who minister to me while I live, and
shall carry my soul from the scaffold to the bosom of Abraham. For although I am
a sinner, yet am I purged by the blood of my Redeemer, who was made a
propitiation for our sins."
Having put on his usual attire, he made a
robe of the finest linen be thrown over him, covering his entire person.
"Behold, I put on my wedding garment," he said. Being called, he arose, put on a
velvet cloak, bade adieu to all, and went forth at a slow pace by reason of his
great age. Fearing lest in mounting the scaffold he should fall, and his enemies
flout him, he craved permission of the minister to lean upon him when ascending
the steps. Being come to the fatal spot, he had much ado to kneel down, and his
head hung so low that the executioner feared to do his office. "My lord," said
Pastor Rosacius, "as you have commended your soul to Christ, do you now lift up
yourself toward heaven." he raised himself up, saying, "Lord Jesus, into thy
hands I commend my spirit." The executioner now gave his stroke, his gray head
sank, and his body lay prostrate on the scaffold.[3]
The fifth to fall
beneath the executioner's sword was Procopius Dworschezky, of Olbramowitz On
receiving his sentence he said, "If the emperor promises himself anything when
my head is off, let it be so." On passing before the judges he said, "Tell the
emperor, as I now stand at his tribunal, the day comes when he shall stand
before the judgment-seat of God." He was proceeding in his address, when the
drums beat and drowned his words. When he had undressed for the executioner, he
took out his purse containing a Hungarian ducat, and gave it to the minister who
attended him, saying, "Behold my last riches! these are unprofitable to me, I
resign them to you." A gold medal of Frederick's coronation, that hung round his
neck, he gave to a bystander, saying, "When my dear King Frederick shall sit
again upon his throne, give it to him, and tell him that I wore it on my breast
till the day of my death." He kneeled down, and the sword falling as he was
praying, his spirit ascended with his last words to God.[4]
Otto Losz, Lord of
Komarow, came next. A man of great parts, he had traveled much, and discharged
many important offices. When he received his sentence he said, "I have seen
barbarous nations, but what cruelty is this! Well, let them send one part of me
to Rome, another to Spain, another to Turkey, and throw the fourth into the sea,
yet will my Redeemer bring my body together, and cause me to see him with these
eyes, praise him with this mouth, and love him with this heart." When Rosacius
entered to tell him that he was called to the scaffold, "he rose hastily out of
his seat," says Comenius, "like one in an ecstasy, saying, 'O, how I rejoice to
see you, that I may tell you what has happened to me! As I sat here grieving
that I had not one of my own communion [the United Brethren] to dispense the
Eucharist to me, I fell asleep, and behold my Savior appeared unto me, and said,
'I purify thee with my blood,' and then infused a drop of his blood into my
heart; at the feeling of this I awaked, and leaped for joy: now I understand
what that is, Believe, and thou hast eaten. I fear death no longer."
As
he went on his way to the scaffold, Rosacius said to him, "That Jesus who
appeared to you in your sleep, will now appear to you in his glory." "Yes,"
replied the martyr, "he will meet me with his angels, and conduct me into the
banqueting-chamber of an everlasting marriage." Being come to the scaffold, he
fell on his face, and prayed in silence. Then rising up, he yielded himself to
the executioner.
He was followed on the scaffold by Dionysius Czernin, of
Chudenitz. This sufferer was a Romanist, but his counsels not pleasing the
Jesuits, he fell under the suspicion of heresy; and it is probable that the
Fathers were not sorry to see hint condemned, for his death served as a pretext
for affirming that these executions were for political, not religious
causes.
When the other prisoners were declaring their faith, Czernin
protested that this was his faith also, and that in this faith did he die. When
the others received the Lord's Supper, he stood by dissolved in tears, praying
most fervently, he was offered the Eucharistic cup; but smiting on his breast,
and sighing deeply, he said, "I rest in that grace which hath come unto me." He
was led to the scaffold by a canon and a Jesuit, but gave small heed to their
exhortations. Declining the "kiss of peace," and turning his back upon the
crucifix, he fell on his face, and prayed softly. Then raising himself, and
looking up into the heavens, he said, "They can kill the body, they cannot kill
the soul; that, O Lord Jesus, I commend to thee," and died.
There
followed other noblemen, whose behavior on the scaffold was equally courageous,
and whose dying words were equally impressive, but to record them all would
unnecessarily prolong our narration. We take a few examples from among the
citizens whose blood was mingled with that of the nobles in defense of the
religion and liberty of their native land. Valentine Kochan, a learned man, a
Governor of the University, and Secretary of Prague, protested, when Ferdinand
II was thrust upon them, that no king should be elected without the consent of
Moravia and Silesia. This caused him to be marked out for vengeance. In his last
hours he bewailed the divisions that had prevailed among the Protestants of
Bohemia, and which had opened a door for their calamities. "O!" said he, "if all
the States had employed more thought and diligence in maintaining union; if
there had not been so much hatred on both sides; if one had not sought
preference before another, and had not given way to mutual suspicions; moreover,
if the clergy and the laity had assisted each other with counsel and action, in
love, unity, and peace, we should never have been thus far misled."[5] On the scaffold he sang
the last verse of the sixteenth: Psalm: "Thou wilt show me the path of life; in
thy presence is fullness of joy, at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore;"
and then yielded his head to the executioner.
Tobias Steffek was a man of
equal modesty and piety. He had been chosen to fill important trusts by his
fellow-citizens. "Many a cup of blessing," said he, "have I received from the
hand of the Lord, and shall I not accept this cup of affliction? I am going by a
narrow path to the heavenly kingdom." His time in prison was mostly passed in
sighs and teals. When called to go to the scaffold, he looked up with eyes
suffused with weeping, yet with the hope shining through his tears that the same
stroke that should sever his head from his body would wipe them away for ever.
In this hope he died.
John Jessenius, professor of medicine, and
Chancellor of! the University of Prague, was the next whose blood was spilt. He
was famed for his medical skill all over Europe. tie was the intimate friend of
the illustrious Tycho Brahe, and Physician in Ordinary to two emperors Rudolph
and Matthias. He it was, it is said, who introduced the study of anatomy into
Prague. Being a man of eloquent address, he was employed on an important embassy
to Hungary, and this made him a marked object of the vengeance of Ferdinand
II.
His sentence was a cruel one. He was first to have his tongue cut
out, then he was to be beheaded, and afterwards quartered. His head was to be
affixed to the Bridge-tower, and his limbs were to be exposed on stakes in the
four quarters of Plague. On hearing this sentence, he said, "You use us too
cruelly; but know that there will not be wanting some who will take down the
heads you thus ignominiously expose, and lay them in the grave."[6]
The Jesuits evinced
a most lively desire to bring this learned man over to their side. Jessenius
listened as they enlarged on the efficacy of good works. "Alas!" replied he, "my
time is so short that I fear I shall not be able to lay up such a stock of
merits as will suffice for my salvation." The Fathers, thinking the victory as
good as won, exclaimed, "My dear Jessenius, though you should die this very
moment, we promise you that you shall go straight to heaven." "Is it so?"
replied the confessor; "then where is your Purgatory for those who are not able
to fill up the number of their good deeds here?" Finding themselves but
befooled, they departed from him.
On mounting the scaffold, the
executioner approached him, and demanded his tongue. He at once gave it that
tongue which had pleaded the cause of his country before princes and States. It
was drawn out with a pair of tongs. He then dropped on his knees, his hands tied
behind his back, and began to pray, "not speaking, but stuttering," says
Comenius. His head was struck off, and affixed to the Bridge-tower, and his body
was taken below the gallows, and dealt with according to the sentence. One of
the lights, not of Bohemia only, but of Europe, had been put
out.
Christopher Khobr was the next whose life was demanded. He was a man
of heroic mind. Speaking to his fellow-sufferers, he said, "How glorious is the
memory of Huss and Jerome! And why? because they laid down their lives for the
truth." He cited the words of Ignatius "I am the corn of God, and shall be
ground with the teeth of beasts." "We also," he added, "are the corn of God,
sown in the field of the Church. Be of good cheer, God is able to raise up a
thousand witnesses from every drop of our blood." He went with firm step, and
face elate, to the place where he was to die. Standing on the scaffold, he said,
"Must I die here? No! I shall live, and declare the works of the Lord in the
land of the living." Kneeling down, he gave his head to the executioner and his
spirit to God. He was followed by John Schulz, Burgomaster of Kuttenberg. On
being led out to die, he sent a message to his friends, saying, "The bitterness
of this parting will make our reunion sweet indeed." On mounting the scaffold,
he quoted the words of the Psalm, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" When he
had gone a few paces forward, he continued, "Trust in God, for I shall yet
praise him." Advancing to the spot where he was to die, he threw himself on his
face, and spread forth his hands in prayer. Then, rising up, he received that
stroke which gave him at once temporal death and eternal life.
In this
procession of kingly and glorious spirits who travel by the crimson road of the
scaffold to the everlasting gates, there are others whom we must permit to pass
on in silence. One other martyr only shall we notice; he is the youngest of them
all, and we have seen him before. He is John Kutnauer, senator of Old Prague,
the same whom we saw praying that there might be given some "token" to the
martyrs, and who, when the bow appeared a little after sunrise spanning the
heavens above Prague, accepted it as the answer to his prayer.[7] No one of all that heroic
company was more courageous than Kutnauer. When the Jesuits came round him, he
said, "Depart, gentlemen; why should you persist in labor so unprofitable to
yourselves, and so troublesome to us?" One of the Fathers observed, "These men
are as hard as rocks." "We are so, indeed," said the senator, "for we are joined
to that rock which is Christ."
When summoned to the scaffold, his friends
threw themselves upon him, overwhelming him with their embraces and tears. He
alone did not weep. "Refrain," he said, "let us be men; a little while, and we
shall meet in the heavenly glory." And then, says the chronicler, "with the face
of a lion, as if going to battle, he set forward, singing in his own tongue the
German hymn: 'Behold the hour draws near,' etc."
Kutnauer was sentenced
to die by the rope, not by the sword. On the scaffold he gave his purse to the
executioner, and then placed himself beneath the beam from which he was to be
suspended. He cried, or rather, says the chronicler, "roared," if haply he might
be heard above the noise of the drums and trumpets, placed around the scaffold
on purpose to drown the last words of the sufferers. "I have plotted no
treason," he said; "I have committed no murder; I have done no deed worthy of
death. I die because I have been faithful to the Gospel and my country. O God,
pardon my enemies, for they know not what they do. Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit." He was then thrown off the ladder, and gave up the ghost.[8]
We close this grand
procession of kings, this march of palm-bearers. As they pass on to the axe and
the halter there is no pallor on their countenances. Their step is firm, and
their eye is bright. They are the men of the greatest talents and the most
resplendent virtues in their nation. They belong to the most illustrious
families of their country. They had filled the greatest offices and they wore
the highest honors of the State; yet we see them led out to die the death of
felons. The day that saw these men expire on the scaffold may be said to have
witnessed the obsequies of Bohemia.
CHAPTER
10 Back to
Top
SUPPRESSION OF PROTESTANTISH IN
BOHEHIA.
Policy of Ferdinand II Murder of Ministers by the Troops
New Plan of Persecution Kindness and its Effects Expulsion of Anabaptists
from Moravia The Pastors Banished Sorrowful Partings Exile of Pastors of
Kuttenberg The Lutherans "Graciously Dismissed" The Churches Razed The New
Clergy Purification of the Churches The Schoolmasters Banished Bibles and
Religious Books Burned Spanish Jesuits and Lichtenstein's Dragoons
Emigration of the Nobles Reign of Terror in the Towns Oppressive Edicts
Ransom-Money Unprotestantizing of Villages and Rural Parts Protestantism
Trampled out Bohemia a Desert Testimony of a Popish
Writer.
THE sufferings of that cruel time were not confined
to the nobles of Bohemia. The pastors were their companions in the horrors of
the persecution. After the first few months, during which the conqueror lured
back by fair promises all who had fled into exile, or had hidden themselves in
secret places, the policy of Ferdinand II and his advisers was to crush at once
the chief men whether of the nobility or of the ministry, and afterwards to dear
with the common people as they might find it expedient, either by the rude
violence of the hangman or the subtle craft of the Jesuit. This astute policy
was pursued with the most unflinching resolution, and the issue was the almost
entire trampling out of the Protestantism of Bohemia and Moravia. In closing
this sad story we must briefly narrate the tortures and death which were
inflicted on the Bohemian pastors, and the manifold woes that befell the unhappy
country.
Even before the victory of the Weissenberg, the ministers in
various parts of Bohemia suffered dreadfully from the license of the troops. No
sooner had the Austrian army crossed the frontier, than the soldiers began to
plunder and kill as they had a mind. Pastors found preaching to their flocks
were murdered in the pulpit; the sick were shot in their beds; some were hanged
on trees, others were tied to posts, and their extremities scorched with fire,
while others were tortured in various cruel ways to compel them to disclose
facts which they did not know, and give up treasure which they did not possess.
To the barbarous murder of the father or the husband was sometimes added the
brutal outrage of his family.
But when the victory of the Weissenberg
gave Bohemia and its capital into the power of Ferdinand, the persecution was
taken out of the hands of the soldiers, and committed to those who knew how to
conduct it, if not more humanely, yet more systematically. It was the settled
purpose of the emperor to bring the whole of Bohemia back to Rome. He was
terrified at the spirit of liberty and patriotism which he saw rising in the
nation; he ascribed that spirit entirely to the new religion of which John Muss
had been the great apostle, since, all down from the martyr's day, he could
trace the popular convulsions to which it had given rise; and he despaired of
restoring quiet and order to Bohemia till it should again be of one religion,
and that religion the Roman. Thus political were blended with religious motives
in the terrible persecution which Ferdinand now commenced.
It was nearly
a year till the plan of persecution was arranged; and when at last the plain was
settled, it was resolved to baptize it by the name of "Reformation." To restore
the altars and images which the preachers of the new faith had east out, and
again plant the old faith in the deformed churches, was, they affirmed, to
effect a real Reformation. They had a perfect right to the word. They appointed
a Commission of Reformers, having at its head the Archbishop of Prague and
several of the Bohemian grandees, and united with them was a numerous body of
Jesuits, who bore the chief burden of this new Reformation. After the
executions, which we have described, were over, it was resolved to proceed by
kindness and persuasion. If the Reformation could not be completed without the
axe and the halter, these would not be wanting; meanwhile, mild measures, it was
thought, would best succeed. The monks who dispersed themselves among the people
assured them of the emperor's favor should they embrace the emperor's religion.
The times were hard, and such as had fallen into straits were assisted with
money or with seed-corn. The Protestant poor were, on the other hand, refused
alms, and at times could not even buy bread with money. Husbands were separated
from their wives, and children from their parents. Disfranchisement, expulsion
from corporations and offices, the denial of burial, and similar oppressions
were inflicted on those who evinced a disposition to remain steadfast in their
Protestant profession. If any one declared that he would exile himself rather
than apostatize, he was laughed at for his folly. "To what land will you go," he
was asked, "where you shall find the liberty you desire? Everywhere you shall
find heresy proscribed. One's native soil is sweet, and you will be glad to
return to yours, only, it may be, to find the door of the emperor's clemency
closed." Numerous conversions were effected before the adoption of a single
harsh measure; but wherever the Scriptural knowledge of Huss's Reformation had
taken root, there the monks found the work much more difficult.
The first
great tentative measure was the expulsion of the Anabaptists from Moravia. The
most unbefriended, they were selected as the first victims. The Anabaptists were
gathered into some forty-five communities or colleges, where they had all things
in common, and were much respected by their neighbors for their quiet and
orderly lives. Their lands were skillfully cultivated, and their taxes duly
paid, but these qualities could procure them no favor in the eyes of their
sovereign. The order for their banishment arrived in the beginning of autumn,
1622, and was all the more severe that it inferred the loss of the labors of the
year. Leaving their fields unreaped and their grapes to rot upon the bough, they
arose, and quitted house and lands and vineyards. The children and aged they
placed in carts, and setting forward in long and sorrowful troops, they held on
their way across the Moravian plains to Hungary and Transylvania, where they
found new habitations. They were happy in being the first to be compelled to go
away; greater severities awaited those whom they left behind.
Stop the
fountains, and the streams will dry up of themselves. Acting on this maxim, it
was resolved to banish the pastors, to shut up the churches, and to burn the
books of the Protestants.
In pursuance of this program of persecution,
the ministers of Prague had six articles laid before them, to which their
submission was demanded, as the condition of their remaining in the country. The
first called on them to collect among themselves a sum of several thousand
pounds, and give it as a loan to the emperor for the payment of the troops
employed in suppressing the rebellion. The remaining five articles amounted to
an abandonment of the Protestant faith. The ministers replied unanimously that
"they would do nothing against their consciences." The decree of banishment was
not long deferred. To pave the way for it, an edict was issued, which threw the
whole blame of the war upon the ministers. They were stigmatized as "turbulent,
rash, and seditious men," who had "made a new king," and who even now "were
plotting pernicious confederacies," and preparing new insurrections against the
emperor. They must therefore, said the edict, be driven from a kingdom which
could know neither quiet nor safety so long as they were in it. Accordingly on
the 13th of December, 1621, [1] the decree of banishment
was given forth, ordering all the ministers in Prague within three days, and all
others throughout Bohemia and the United Provinces within eight days, to remove
themselves beyond the bounds of the kingdom, "and that for ever." If any of the
proscribed should presume to remain in the country, or should return to it, they
were to suffer death, and the same fate was adjudged to all who should dare to
harbor them, or who should in the least favor or help them.[2]
But, says Comenius,
"the scene of their departure cannot be described," it was so overwhelmingly
sorrowful. The pastors were followed by their loving flocks, bathed in tears,
and so stricken with anguish of spirit, that they gave vent to their grief in
sighs and groans. Bitter, thrice bitter, were their farewells, for they knew
they should see each other no more on earth. The churches of the banished
ministers were given to the Jesuits.
The same sorrowful scenes were
repeated in all the other towns of Bohemia where there were Protestant ministers
to be driven away; and what town was it that had not its Protestant pastor?
Commissaries of Reformation went from town to town with a troop of horse,
enforcing the edict. Many of the Romanists sympathized with the exiled pastors,
and condemned the cruelty of the Government; the populations generally were
friendly to the ministers, and their departure took place amid public tokens of
mourning on the part of those among whom they had lived. The crowds on the
streets were often so great that the wagons that bore away their little ones
could with difficulty move forward, while sad and tearful faces looked down upon
the departing troop from the windows. On the 27th of July, 1623, the ministers
of Kuttenberg were commanded to leave the city before break of day, and remove
beyond the bounds of the kingdom within eight days. Twenty-one ministers passed
out at the gates at early morning, followed by some hundreds of citizens. After
they had gone a little way the assembly halted, and drawing aside from the
highway, one of the ministers, John Matthiades, preached a farewell sermon to
the multitude, from the words, "They shall cast you out of the
synagogues."
Earnestly did the preacher exhort them to constancy. The
whole assembly was drowned in tears. When the sermon had ended, "the heavens
rang again," says the chronicler, "with their songs and their lamentations, and
with mutual embraces and kisses they commended each other to the grace of
God."[3] The flocks returned to the
city, and their exiled shepherds went on their way.
The first edict of
proscription fell mainly upon the Calvinistic clergy and the ministers of the
United Brethren. The Lutheran pastors were left unmolested as yet. Ferdinand II
hesitated to give offense to the Elector of Saxony by driving his
co-religionists out of his dominions. But the Jesuits took the alarm when they
saw the Calvinists, who had been deprived of their own pastors, flocking to the
churches of the Lutheran clergy. They complained to the monarch that the work
was only half done, that the pestilence could not be arrested till every
Protestant minister had been banished from the hind, and the urgencies of the
Fathers at length prevailed over the fears of the king. Ferdinand issued an
order that the Lutheran ministers should follow their brethren of the
Calvinistic and Moravian Communion into exile. The Elector of Saxony
remonstrated against this violence, and was politely told that it was very far
indeed from being the fact that the Lutheran clergy had been banished they had
only received a "gracious dismissal."[4]
The razing of the
churches in many places was consequent on the expulsion of the pastors. Better
that they should be ruinous heaps than that they should remain to be occupied by
the men who were now brought to fill them. The lowest of the priests were
drafted from other places to enjoy the vacant livings, and fleece, not feed, the
desolate flocks. There could not be found so many curates as there were now
empty churches in Bohemia; and two, six, nay, ten or a dozen parishes were
committed to the care of one man. Under these hirelings the people learned the
value of that Gospel which they had, perhaps too easily, permitted to be taken
from them, in the persons of their banished pastors. Some churches remained
without a priest for years; "but the people," says Comenius, "found it a less
affliction to lack wholesome instruction than to resort to poisoned pastures,
and become the prey of wolves."[5]
A number of monks
were imported from Poland, that country being near, and the language similar,
but their dissolute lives were the scandal of that Christianity which they were
brought to teach. On the testimony of all historians, Popish as well as
Protestant, they were riotous livers, insatiably greedy, and so shamelessly
profligate that abominable crimes, unknown in Bohemia till then, and not fit to
be named, say the chroniclers, began to pollute the land. Even the Popish
historian Pelzel says, "they led vicious lives." Many of them had to return to
Poland faster than they had come, to escape the popular vengeance which their
misdeeds had awakened against them. Bohemia was doubly scourged: it had lost its
pious ministers, and it had received in their room men who were fitter to occupy
the culprit's cell than the teacher's chair.
The cleansing of the
churches which had been occupied by the Protestant ministers, before being again
taken possession of by the Romish clergy, presents us with many things not only
foolish, but droll. The pulpit was first whipped, next sprinkled with holy
water, then a priest was made to enter it, and speaking for the pulpit to say,
"I have sinned." The altars at which the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper had been
dispensed were dealt with much in the same way. When the Jesuits took possession
of the church in Prague which had been occupied by the United Brethren, they
first strewed gunpowder over its flora-, and then set fire to it, to disinfect
the building by flame and smoke from the poison of heresy. The "cup," the
well-known Bohemian symbol, erected over church portals and city gates, was
pulled down, and a statue of the Virgin put up fit its stead. If a church was
not to be used, because it was not needed, or because it was inconveniently
situated, it was either razed or shut up. If only shut up it was left
unconsecrated, and in that dreadful condition the Romanists were afraid to enter
it. The churchyards shared the fate of the churches. The monumental tablets of
the Protestant (lead were broken in pieces, the inscriptions were effaced, and
the bones of the dead in many instances were dug up and burned.[6]
After the pastors,
the iron hand of persecution fell upon the schoolmasters. All teachers who
refused to conform to the Church of Rome, and teach the new catechism of the
Jesuit Canisius, were banished. The destruction of the Protestant University of
Prague followed. The non-Catholic professors were exiled, and the building was
delivered over to the Jesuits. The third great measure adopted for the overthrow
of Protestantism was the destruction of all religious books. A commission
traveled from town to town, which, assembling the people by the tolling of the
bells, explained to them the cause of their visit, and "exhorted them," says
George Holyk, "in kind, sweet, and gentle words, to bring all their books." If
gentle words failed to draw out the peccant volumes, threats and a strict
inquisition in every house followed. The books thus collected were examined by
the Jesuits who accompanied the commissioners, and while immoral works escaped,
all in which was detected the slightest taint of heresy were condemned. They
were carried away in baskets and carts, piled up in the market-place, or under
the gallows, or outside the city gates, and there burned. Many thousands of
Bohemian Bibles, and countless volumes of general literature, were thus
destroyed. Since that time a Bohemian book and a scarce book have been
synonymous. The past of Bohemia was blotted out; the great writers and the
illustrious warriors who had flourished in it were forgotten; the noble memories
of early times were buried in the ashes of these fires; and the Jestuits found
it easy to make their pupils believe that, previous to their arrival, the
country had been immersed in darkness, and that with them came the first streaks
of light in its sky.[7]
The Jesuits who
were so helpful in this "Reformation" were Spaniards. They had brought with them
the new order of the Brethren of Mercy, who proved their most efficient
coadjutors. Of these Brethren of Mercy, Jacobeus gives the following graphic but
not agreeable picture: "They were saints abroad, but furies at home; their
dress was that of paupers, but their tables were those of gluttons; they had the
maxims of the ascetic, but the morals of the rake." Other allies, perhaps even
more efficient in promoting conversions to the Roman Church, came to the aid of
the Jesuits. These were the well-known Lichtenstein dragoons. These men had
never faced an enemy, or learned on the battle-field to be at once brave and
merciful. They were a set of vicious and cowardly ruffians, who delighted in
terrifying, torturing, and murdering the pious peasants. They drove them like
cattle to church with the saber. When billeted on Protestant families, they
conducted themselves like incarnate demons; the members of the household had
either to declare themselves Romanists, or flee to the woods, to be out of the
reach of their violence and the hearing of their oaths. As the Jesuits were
boasting at Rome in presence of the Pope of having converted Bohemia, the famous
Capuchin, Valerianus Magnus, who was present, said, "Holy Father, give me
soldiers as they were given to the Jesuits, and I will convert the whole world
to the Catholic faith."[8]
We have already
narrated the executions of the most illustrious of the Bohemian nobles. Those
whose lives were spared were overwhelmed by burdensome taxes, and reiterated
demands for stuns of money, on various pretexts. After they had been tolerably
fleeced, it was resolved to banish them from the kingdom. On Ignatius Loyola's
day, the 31st of July, in the year 1627, an edict appeared, in which the emperor
declared that, having "a fatherly care for the salvation of his kingdom," he
would permit none but Catholics to live in it, and he commanded all who refused
to return to the Church of Rome, to sell their estates within six months, and
depart from Bohemia. Some there were who parted with "the treasure of a good
conscience" that they might remain in their native land; but the greater part,
more steadfastly-minded, sold their estates for a nominal price in almost every
instance, and went forth into exile.[9] The, decree of banishment
was extended to widows. Their sons and daughters, being minors, were taken
forcible possession of by the Jesuits, and were shut up in colleges and
convents, and their goods managed by tutors appointed by the priests. About a
hundred noble families, forsaking their ancestral domains, were dispersed
throughout the neighboring countries, and among these was the gray-headed baron,
Charles Zierotin, a man highly respected throughout all Bohemia for :his piety
and courage.
The places of the banished grandees were filled by persons
of low degree, to whom the emperor could give a patent of nobility, but to whom
he could give neither elevation of soul, nor dignity of character, nor grace of
manners. The free cities were placed under a reign of terrorism. New governors
and imperial judges were appointed to rule them; but from what class of the
population were these officials drawn? The first were selected from the new
nobility; the second, says Comenius and his statement was not denied by his
contemporaries were taken from "banished Italians or Germans, or apostate
Bohemians, gluttons who had squandered their fortunes, notorious murderers,
bastards, cheats, fiddlers, stage-players, mutineers, even men who were unable
to read, without property, without home, without conscience."[10] Such were the judges to
whom the goods, the liberties, and the lives of the citizens were committed. The
less infamous of the new officials, the governors namely, were soon removed, and
the "gluttons, murderers, fiddlers, and stage-players" were left to tyrannize at
pleasure. No complaint was listened to; extortionate demands were enforced by
the military; marriage was forbidden except to Roman Catholics; funeral rites
were prohibited at Protestant burials; to harbor any of the banished ministers
was to incur fine and imprisonment; to work on a Popish holiday was punishable
with imprisonment and a fine of ten florins; to laugh at a priest, or at his
sermon, inferred banishment and confiscation of goods; to eat flesh on
prohibited (lays, without an indulgence from the Pope, was to incur a fine of
ten florins; to be absent from Church on Sunday, or ca festival-mass days, to
send one's son to a non-Catholic school, or to educate one's family at home, was
forbidden under heavy penalties; non-Catholics were not permitted to make a
will; if nevertheless they did so, it was null and void; none were to be
admitted into arts or trades unless they first embraced the Popish faith. If any
should speak unbecomingly of the "Blessed Virgin the Mother of God," or of the
"illustrious House of Austria," "he shall lose his head, without the least favor
or pardon." The poor in the hospitals were to be converted to the Roman Catholic
faith before the feast of All Saints, otherwise they were to be turned out, and
not again admitted till they had entered the Church of Rome. So was it enacted
in July, 1624, by Charles, Prince of Lichtenstein, as "the constant and
unalterable will of His Sacred Majesty Ferdinand II."[11]
In the same year
(1624) all the citizens of Prague who had not renounced their Protestant faith,
and entered the Roman communion, were informed by public edict that they had
forfeited their estates by rebellion.
Nevertheless, their gracious
monarch was willing to admit them to pardon. Each citizen was required to
declare on oath the amount of goods which he possessed, and his pardon-money was
fixed accordingly. The "ransom" varied from 100 up to 6,000 guilders. The next
"thunderbolt" that fell on the non-Catholics was the deprivation of the rights
of citizenship. No one, if not in communion with the Church of Rome, could carry
on a trade or business in Prague. Hundreds were sunk at once by this decree into
poverty. It was next resolved to banish the more considerable of those citizens
who still remained "unconverted." First four leading men had sentence of exile
recorded against them; then seventy others were expatriated. Soon thereafter,
several hundreds were sent into banishment; and the crafty persecutors now
paused to mark the effect of these severities upon the common people. Terrified,
ground down into poverty, suffering from imprisonment and other inflictions, and
deprived of their leaders, they found the people, as they had hoped, very
pliant. A small number, who voluntarily exiled themselves, excepted, the
citizens conformed. Thus the populous and once Protestant Prague bowed its neck
to the Papal yoke.[12] In a similar way, and with
a like success, did the "Commissioners of the Reformation" carry out their
instructions in all the chief cities of Bohemia.
After the same fashion
were the villages and rural parts "unprotestantized." The Emperor Matthias, in
1610, had guaranteed the peasantry of Bohemia in the free exercise of the
Protestant religion. This privilege was now abolished, beginning was made in the
villages, where the flocks were deprived of their shepherds. Their Bibles and
other religious books were next taken from them and destroyed, that the flame
might go out when the fuel was withdrawn. The ministers and Bibles out of the
way, the monks appeared on the scene. They entered with soft words and smiling
faces. They confidently promised lighter burdens and happier times if the people
would only forsake their heresy. They even showed them the beginning of this
golden age, by bestowing upon the more necessitous a few small benefactions.
When the conversions did not answer the fond expectations of the Fathers, they
changed their first bland utterances into rough words, and even threats. The
peasantry were commanded to go to mass. A list of the parishioners was given to
the clerk, that the absentees from church might be marked, and visited with
fine. If one was detected at a secret Protestant conventicle, he was punished
with flagellation and imprisonment. Marriage and baptism were next forbidden to
Protestants. The peasants were summoned to the towns to be examined and, it
might be, punished. If they failed to obey the citation they were surprised
overnight by the soldiers, taken from their beds, and driven into the towns like
herds of cattle, where they were thrust into prisons, towers, cellars, and
stables; many perishing through the hunger, thirst, cold, and stench which they
there endured. Other tortures, still more horrible and disgusting, were
invented, and put in practice upon these miserable creatures. Many renounced
their faith.
Some, unwilling to abjure, and yet unable to bear their
prolonged tortures, earnestly begged their persecutors to kill them outright.
"No," would their tormentors reply, "the emperor does not thirst for your blood,
but for your salvation." This sufficiently accounts for the paucity of martyrs
unto blood in Bohemia, notwithstanding the lengthened and cruel persecution to
which it was subject. There were not wanting many who would have braved death
for their faith; but the Jesuits studiously avoided setting up the stake, and
preferred rather to wear out the disciples of the Gospel by tedious and cruel
tortures. Those only whose condemnation they could color with some political
pretext, as was the case with the noblemen whose martyrdoms we have recorded,
did they bring to the scaffold. Thus they were able to suppress the
Protestantism of Bohemia, and yet they could say, with some little plausibility,
that no one had died for his religion.
But in trampling out its
Protestantism the persecutor trampled out the Bohemian nation. First of all, the
flower of the nobles perished on the scaffold. Of the great families that
remained 185 sold their castles and hinds and left the kingdom. Hundreds of the
aristocratic families followed the nobles into exile. Of the common people not
fewer than 36,000 families emigrated. There was hardly a kingdom in Europe where
the exiles of Bohemia were not to be met with. Scholars, merchants, traders,
fled from a land which was given over as a prey to the disciples of Loyola, and
the dragoons of Ferdinand. Of the 4,000,000 who inhabited Bohemia in 1620, a
miserable remnant, amounting not even to a fifth, were all that remained in
1648. [13] Its fanatical sovereign is
reported to have said that he would rather reign over a desert than over a
kingdom peopled by heretics. Bohemia was now a desert.
This is not our
opinion only, it is that of Popish historians also. "Until that time," says
Pelzel, "the Bohemians appeared on the field of battle as a separate' nation,
and they not infrequently earned glory. They were now thrust among other
nations, and their flame has never since resounded on the field of battle
. Till
that time, the Bohemians, taken as a nation, had been brave, dauntless,
passionate for glory, and enterprising; but now they lost all courage, all
national pride, all spirit of enterprise. They fled into forests like sheep
before the Swedes, or suffered themselves to be trampled under foot
. The
Bohemian language, which was used in all public transactions, and of which the
nobles were proud, fell into contempt
. As high as the Bohemians had risen in
science, literature, and arts, in the reigns of Maximilian and Rudolph, so low
did they now sink in all these respects. I do not know of any scholar who, after
the expulsion of the Protestants, distinguished himself in any learning
. With
that period the history of the Bohemians ends, and that of other nations in
Bohemia begins."[14]
Book 20 Index
FOOTNOTES
VOLUME THIRD
BOOK NINETEENTH
VOLUME THIRD- BOOK NINETEENTH- CHAPTER 1
[1] Krasinski, History Reform. in Poland, vol. 1., p. 2; Lond.; 1838.
[2] A remarkable man, the inventor of the Slavonic alphabet.
[3] Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., p. 61.
[4] Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 174.
[5] Krasinski, S1avonia, p. 182; Lond., 1849.
[6] Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 1., pp. 115, 116.
[7] Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 185.
[8] Krasinski Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 1., pp. 138 140.
[9] Constitutiones Synodorum apud Krasinski.
[10] Zalaszowski, Jus Publicum Regni Poloniae Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., p. 157.
[11] Vide Hosii Opera, Antverpise, 1571; and Stanislai Hosii Vita autore Rescio, Romae, 1587. Subscription to the above creed by the clergy was enjoined because many of the bishops were suspected of heresy " quod multi inter episcopos erant suspecti."
[12] Bzovius, ann. 1551
[13] Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., pp. 186 188.
[14] This nobleman was the descendant of that Wenceslaus of Leszna who defended John Huss at the Council of Krasinski, Hist. Constance. He had adopted for his motto, Malo pericuIosam Iibertatem quam tutum servitium- "Better the dangers of liberty than the safeguards of slavery."
[15] Vide Reform. Poland, vol. 1., pp. 188, 189, where the original Polish authorities are cited.
VOLUME THIRD- BOOK NINETEENTH- CHAPTER 2
[1] Gerdesius, Hist. Reform., vol 3., p. 146.
[2] Ibid. This is the date (1523) of their friendship as given by Gerdesius; it is doubtful, however, whether it began so early'.
[3] "Is in iisdem cum Erasmo aedibus vixerat Basileae." (Gerdesius, vol. 3., p. 146.)
[4] Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., p. 247
[5] Alasco, Opp., vol. 2., p. 548 apud D'Aubigne, 7:546.
[6] Gerdesius, Hist. Reform., vol 3., p. 147.
[7] Alasco, Opp., vol. 2., p. 558.
[8] In 1540, Alasco had married at Mainz, to put an insurmountable barrier between himself and Rome.
[9] Alasco, Opp., vol. 2., p. 560.
[10] Gerdesius, Hist. Reform., vol. 3., p. 148.
[11] Gerdesius, Hist. Reform., vol. 3., p. 150.
[12] Strype, Cranmer, pp. 234 240. The young king granted him letters patent, erecting Alasco and the other ministers of the foreign congregations into a body corporate. The affairs of each congregation were managed by a minister, ruling elders and deacons. The oversight of all was committed to Alasco as superintendent. He had greater trouble but no more authority than the others, and was subject equally with them to the discipline of the, Church. Although he allowed no superiority of office or authority to superintendents, he considered that they were of Divine appointment, and that Peter held this rank among the apostles. (Vide McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 1., p. 407, notes.)
[13] Gerdesius, vol. 3., p. 151. Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 1., pp. 264 266.
[14] Vide Letter of Calvin to John Alasco Bonnet, vol. 2., p. 432.
[15] Gerdesius, vol. 3., p. 151
[16] Krasinski, Slovenia, pp. 214, 215.
[17] Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 217; and Hist. Reform Poland, vol. 1., pp. 272, 273
[18] Gerdesius, vol, 3., p. 151.
[19] "Carnifex."
[20] Krasinski, Slavonia, pp. 217, 218.
[21] Poland was divided politically into Great and Little Poland. The first comprehended the western parts, and being the original seat of the Polish power, was called Great Poland, although actually less than the second division, which comprehended the south-eastern provinces, and was styled Little Poland.
[22] Gerdesius, vol. 3., p. 152.
[23] Krasinski says that but scanty materials exist for illustrating the last four years of John Alasco's life. This the count explains by the fact that his descendants returned into the bosom of the Roman Church after his death, and that all records of his labors for the Reformation of his native land, as well as most of his published works, were destroyed by the Jesuits.
[24] There were two brothers of that name, both zealous Protestants. The one was Bishop of Capo d'Istria, and
[25] Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 227.
[26] Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland. vol. 1., p. 309, foot-note.
VOLUME THIRD- BOOK NINETEENTH- CHAPTER 3
[1] Raynaldus, ad ann. 1556. Starowolski, Epitomae Synodov. apud Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 1., p. 305
[2] Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., pp. 310, 311. Bayle, art. "Radziwi11."
[3] Pietro Soave Polano, Hist. Counc. Trent, lib. 5., p. 399; Lond., 1629.
[4] "Episcopi sunt non custodes sed proditores reipublicae." (Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., p. 312.)
[5] Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 232, foot-note.
[6] Vie de Commendoni, par Gratiani, Fr. Trans., p. 213 et seq. apud Krasinski, Slavonia, pp. 232 234.
[7] See ante, bk. 3., chap. 19, p. 212.
[8] Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 1., p. 368.
[9] This union is known in history as the Consensus Sandomiriensis.
[10] These articles are a compromise between the Lutheran and Calvinistic theologies, on the vexed question of the Eucharist. The Lutherans soon began loudly to complain that though their phraseology was Lutheran their sense was Calvinistic, and the union, as shown in the text, was short-lived.
[11] Krasinski, Hist Reform. Poland, vol. 1., chap. 9.
VOLUME THIRD- BOOK NINETEENTH- CHAPTER 4
[1] Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 2., p. 294.
[2] Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 2., pp. 15 34.
[3] Hosius wrote in the same terms from Rome to the Archbishop and clergy of Poland: "Que ce que le Roi avait promis a Paris n'etait qu'une feinte et dissimulation; et qu'aussitot qu'il serait couronne, il chasserait hors du royaume tout exercice de religion autre que la Romaine." (MS. of Dupuis in the Library of Richelieu at Paris apud Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 2., 1). 39.)
VOLUME THIRD- BOOK NINETEENTH- CHAPTER 5
[1] The fact that Bathory before his election to the throne of Poland was a Protestant, and not, as historians commonly assert, a Romanist, was first published by Krasinski, on the authority of a MS. history now in the Library at St. Petersburg, written by Orselski, a contemporary of the events. (Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 2., p. 48 )
[2] Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 2., p. 53.
[3] Ibid., vol. 2., pp. 49, 50.
VOLUME THIRD- BOOK NINETEENTH- CHAPTER 6
[1] See his Life by Rescius (Reszka), Rome, 1587. Numerous editions have been published of his works; the best is that of Cologne, 1584, containing his letters to many of the more eminent of his contemporaries.
[2] Lukaszewicz (a Popish author), History of the Helvetian Churches of Lithuania, vol. 1., pp. 47, 85. and vol. 2., p. 192; Posen, 1842, 1843 apud Krasinski, Slavonia,..... pp. 289, 294.
[3] Albert Wengiersi
[4] A Spanish Jesuit who compiled a grammar which the Jesuits used in the schools of Poland.
[5] Dialogue of a Landowner with a Parish Priest. The work, published about 1620, excited the violent anger of the Jesuits; but being unable to wreak their vengeance on the author, the printer, at their instigation, was publicly flogged, and afterwards banished. (See Krasinski, S1avonia, p. 296.)
[6] Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 333.
[7] Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol 2., chap. 12.
[8] Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 356.
VOLUME THIRD- BOOK NINETEENTH- CHAPTER 7
[1] Isaiah 26:21
[2] See ante, vol. 1., bk. 3
[3] We have in the same place narrated the origin of the "United Brethren," their election by lot of three men who were afterwards ordained by Stephen, associated with whom, in the laying on of hands, were other Waldensian pastors. Comenius, who relates the transaction, terms Stephen a chief man or bishop among the Waldenses. He afterwards suffered martyrdom for the faith.
[4] See ante, vol. 1, bk. 3., chap. 7, p. 162.
[5] Comenius, Historia Persecutionum Ecclesia Bohemica, cap. 28, p. 98; Lugd Batav., 1647.
[6] Ibid., cap. 28, p. 29.
[7] "Placide expirarunt." (Comenius, cap. 30, p. 109.)
[8] Comenius, cap. 29, p. 102.
[9] Ibid., cap. 29, p. 105.
[10] Comenius, cap. 30, pp. 105, 106.
[11] "Parata mihi sunt et indusium et pallium, quando lubet duci jubete." (Comenius, p. 107.)
[12] "Cum ossibus, capillis, nervis et venis in Sacramento contineri." (Comenius, p. 108.)
[13] Comenius, p. 110. The Reformation and Anti-Reforma tion in Bohemia (from the German), vol. 1., pp. 66, 67; Lond., 1845.
[14] Comenius, cap. 36.
[15] Comenius, cap. 37.
[16] Reform. and Anti-Reform. in Bohem., vol. 1., p. 75.
[17] Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 145.
[18] Comenius, cap. 39, pp. 126, 127.
[19] Comenius, cap. 39. Reform. and Anti-Reform. in Bohem., vol. 1., pp. 105, 107.
[20] Krasinski, Slavonia, pp. 145, 146.
VOLUME THIRD- BOOK NINETEENTH- CHAPTER 8
[1] Reform. and Anti-Reform. in Bohem., vol. 1., p. 187.
[2] Comenius, cap. 40. Reform. and Anti-Reform. In Bohem., vol. 1., p. 193 et seq.
[3] Comenius, cap. 40, pp. 134-136.
[4] "Adsuevi." (Comenius.)
[5] Comenius, cap. 42. Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 146.
[6] Balbin assures us that some Jesuits, despite the order to withdraw, remained in Prague disguised as coal-fire men. (Reform. and Anti-Reform. in Bohem., vol. 1., p. 336.)
[7] Comenius, cap. 44, p. 154.
[8] "Lumina et columina patriae." (Comenius, cap. 59.)
[9] Comenius, pp. 209-211. Reform. and Anti-Reform. In Bohem., pp. 287- 290.
[10] Comenius, pp. 211, 212.
[11] "Ut muscae advolabant." (Comenius.)
[12] "Nuntiatur formosissimus caelum cinxisse arcus." (Comenius.)
[13] Comenius, pp. 223, 224.
[14] Comenius, p. 225.
VOLUME THIRD- BOOK NINETEENTH- CHAPTER 9
[1] The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 1., p. 401.
[2] Comenius, cap. 63.
[3] Comenius, cap. 64. The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 1., pp. 416, 417.
[4] Comenius, cap. 65.
[5] The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 1., p. 423
[6] This anticipation was realized in 1631. After the victory of Gustavus Adolphus at Leipsic, Prague was entered, and Count Thorn took down the heads from the Bridge-tower, and conveyed them to the Tein Church, followed by a large assemblage of nobles, pastors, and citizens, who had returned from exile. They were afterwards buried, but the spot was concealed from the knowledge of the Romanists. (Comenius, cap. 73.)
[7] This bow is mentioned by both Protestant and Popish writers. The people, after gazing some time at it, admiring its beauty, were seized with fear, and many rushed in terror to their houses.
[8] Comenius, cap. 78. The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 1., pp. 429, 430.
VOLUME THIRD- BOOK NINETEENTH- CHAPTER 10
[1] Comenius, cap. 51, p. 184.
[2] Ibid.
[3] "Tandem cantu et fictu resonante caelo, amplexibus et osculis mutuis Divinae se commendarunt gratiae." (Comenius, p. 195.)
[4] The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia. vol. 2., pp. 32, 33.
[5] Comenius, cap. 54, p. 192.
[6] The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 2., pp. 16-19.
[7] Comenius, cap. 105. The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 2., chap. 3.
[8] The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, vol. 2., p. 114.
[9] Comenius, cap. 89.
[10] "Lurcones qui sua decoxerant, homicidas infames, spurios, mangones, fidicines, comaedos, ciniflones, quosdam etiam alphabeti ignaros homines," etc. (Comenius, cap. 90, p. 313.)
[11] Comenius, cap. 91.
[12] Comenius, cap. 92.
[13] Ludwig Hausser, Period of the Reformation, vol. 2., p. 107; Lond., 1873.
[14] Pelzel, Geschichte von Bohmen, p. 185 et seq. Krasinski, Slavonia, p. 158.